Before we head out for the weekend, the normal Friday round-up of relevant news and views, hints and links.

– ReadWriteWeb has a non-profits web toolkit; a touch US-centric, but useful nonetheless

– Hazel Blears gave a speech about ‘Confident Communities‘ at the recent DTA conference. Worth a read: she’s been a supporter of SSE ever since an early pilot in Salford, and has a genuine passion for local, community-led change

– The ever-reliably-readable Lucy Bernholz reports on why microfinance isn’t always good

– Lots of blogged reaction to Anita Roddick’s life and work; see also this week’s issue of the Big Issue for more.

– Intelligent Giving cover the Northern Rock fallout, and how it might affect their charitable foundation / work

– A social enterprise trade association is being piloted in the South West….

– Socially Responsible Investment: if you don’t know what or how, this new website should help

– It has been a momentous (political) summer for the 3rd sector, according to one sector commentator

– [also via VolResource] Big Lottery’s version of what is a business plan: useful intro; many more out there…

– this American article from the SSIR newsletter (Stanford Social Innovation Review) acts as a useful adjunct / support for the Young Foundation report we discussed recently….all about creating "high impact non profits"

– [slightly offf-topic] in blog world, there’s what is technically known as a hoo-ha brewing, after some high-profile UK blogs were taken down by their ISP for things they’d written about Uzbekistan / one billionaire in particular….check out the huge amount of comment this has generated

–  Occasionally at SSE, we work with and support not social entrepreneurs, but serial social entrepreneurs; those who, according to this article on the Secrets of Serial Entrepreneurs, "ha[ve] a higher propensity for risk, innovation and achievement; [are]
less scared of failure. And they [are] more able to recover when they [do] fail."

Have a great weekend…..