Accounting Tools for Nonprofits! Fireside Chat 3/30 at 11AM

Financial Management Webinar Live Chat Page

Associated with Nonprofit Accounting Solutions Fireside Chat on March 30 at 11am PST.  See official invite for more info.

 

Written by: InKenzo

Tiny Stories

A blog post told in short video tales by friends and colleagues….thanks for your TSDIGS submissions and we hope to see you at the NPC Screening Party on 2/23 at 7PM on Aloft Nonprofit Commons! The drive-in opens soon…..
glitter gets them ready!
Here’s a little story from my friends at HitRecord, inspiration for me to continue making tiny stories.

I created a little machinima teaser story for Ethelred at Neenah Historical Society as part of the ongoing Stories of Impact series, looking at Common Ground and how we’ve all come together here at Nonprofit Commons.

As we welcome Rik Riel to join the Nonprofit Commons team as Community Manager we’ll have many great stories to share this year! Look for reasons to wear roller skates and the Veri Oddfellow/Rik Riel danceoff that will hopefully go down in 2011.

If you created a one minute video for the TechSoup Digital Storytelling Challenge you may want to consider entering it into these public festivals:

* TED: www.ted.com

* FILMINUTE: @filminute

We travel around the world for stories and today we were shooting in the Egypt sim as people were VOTING:
Egypt - shutting down the internet

Weighty words from people who cannot access grids, it can happen anywhere. Thanks for sharing your stories here at the Nonprofit Commons. Here’s a last story from The Love Foundation on Plush:

Written by: InKenzo

Digital Storytelling Methods: Time & Resources Needed?

We have thousands of new digital storytellers joining us for TweetChats, webinars and events with TSDIGS Digital Storytelling Challenge this month and many questions have been coming in! You can view some of the forum questions from last week here and chime in with your own questions anytime this week.

One of the most common questions is how much time will it take to produce your first digital story. This varies wildly depending on the people, the team, the equipment availability and how you tend to work so I can only tell you my personal experience with various platforms, in order from least amount of time needed to most amount of time and resources to produce your one minute story.

Time, software and other elements needed are mentioned here….feel free to ask questions and leave comments using the #TSDIGS tag so we can address them in events this week or join today’s TweetChat at 11AM PST.

FLIP CAMERA: Less than one hour total time needed $$
Requires: Flip camera with the flip upload/edit software, time to cut your clips and put them in order, add a quick title card at beginning and end. Can be online to YouTube in an hour from first shooting footage if your shots are simple and require little editing. This is not a tool that looks extremely professional (HD camera lacks broadcast-quality sound and editing options) but this will get you online quickly to be more prolific. Similar tools exist for mobile phones and some platforms have video editing apps available at low cost.

XTRANORMAL, MOVIESTORM & ANIMOTO: One hour to produce a short animated video $
I have primarily used XTRANORMAL but there are many tools that allow you to make quick online movies using your existing images, content or script. With XTRANORMAL I spent a few minutes scripting it out, blocked out movements and animation prompts and did a few iterations in under an hour, uploading it to YouTube at the hour mark. This media works well for humor or for making complex ideas simple.

FLICKR PHOTO COLLECTION: 2-5 hours to produce a 5 photo slide set $
Plan to spend more time curating, fixing, adding text or watermarks in Photoshop and cleaning up your images prior to upload. Taking photos is fairly easy and straightforward but the greatest artists in this arena work with their raw material and help it tell the story more vividly through juxtaposition, composition, additional text & descriptions along with tags and online tools for telling the details of your story, like geolocation and the people featured in your photos.

MACHINIMA: 6-15 hours to produce a short animated/mixed media short video $$
My practice with machinima was to shoot it live using IShowUHD in Second Life and get the energy of what’s happening in the moment (like improv), not overscripting but making sure all characters know what to expect and what questions to answer in their voiceovers. I record VO separately using Audio Hijack and edit pieces together, aiming to have projects take me less than a day’s worth of work, or a few hours spread out over a week. Well produced shorts by Draxtor take more time and more attention to post-production after your shoot.

DIY HD VIDEO: 4-48 hours to produce a short live action video $$$
This wildly varies based on time scripting, how many scenes, how complicated of an edit, are you waiting for special pieces like voiceover or music from someone who is hard to reach? I need at least an hour to polish a short script, an hour to shoot and an hour to edit for upload as minimum but expect that your first video story may take a few afternoons: one day for scripting, one day for shooting the essentials, at least one or two for editing and iterations with room for pickup shots and photoshopping art for title cards. If you will be editing and showing a rough cut to your team prior to uploading a final cut plan for an extra day or two for rewrites and changes as you find your voice.

ANIMATION: 3-555 hours to produce a short animated video featurette $$-$$$$$
Depending on the software you are using and the complexity of your content this can be done in an afternoon or can be produced by dozens of people over the course of weeks. Googledocs, Photoshop and other non-traditional animation tools can make animation available to everyday users without paying for expensive 3D programs like Maya, while AfterEffects and common animation tools for video are more expensive than most DIY solutions and require a professional-level user to make high quality content.

PRODUCED HD VIDEO FOR BROADCAST: 14 days – 90 days with a professional production company $$$$$
Most large nonprofits hire companies that act as production studios for their PSAs and broadcast-ready content. A professional producer/writer/director team will want to meet with your nonprofit team for at least 3-5 sessions where script, shooting details and iterations will be discussed. This is very difficult to pull off in a short amount of time unless there is a focused team that understands tight TV schedules with quick turnaround needs.

Are you curious about other methods, platforms, software or digital storytelling tools? Leave us a comment here so we’re able to share the resources most needed for your team! Remember to enter by January 31st to join the TSDIGS Digital Storytelling Challenge in 2011.

Written by: InKenzo

Looking Back & Looking Forward

As we tip forward into a new year and #TSDIGS Digital Storytelling Event it’s a great time to celebrate what’s working in our virtual community, learn a few lessons and set intention for the coming year together. What were some of the highlights of our time together at NPC this past year?

1.Preferred Family Healthcare receives a grant for $865,000 for virtual addiction therapy services and PopSci features Coughran and Brena this month. Lesson learned: dream big and have metrics to back yourself up!

2.Virtual Haiti Relief teams raise thousands through virtual events in partnership with NPC and other charitable avatars. Lesson: build partnerships early, before disaster strikes, so you’re ready to leap into action together.

3.TechSoup trainings, webinars and events draw thousands of nonprofit leaders to learn about new platforms, tools and opportunities to grow. Lesson: keep providing easy opportunities to learn new tools and the community grows in appreciation.

4.NPCGames, a special working group for nonprofits interested in developing games, grew to include dozens of specialists working across sectors to grow causebuilding options for play. Lesson: Nonprofit leaders can be gamers too and we need both mindsets to develop meaningful play experiences.

5.GreenTech initiatives take hold in many organizations, reducing energy and resource costs while encouraging use of cloud and virtual platforms as an alternative to travel. Lesson: promoting efficient virtual teamwork helps reduce operation cost for some nonprofits.

6.Stories of Impact machinima videos joined our YouTube page featuring some of the best NPC leaders in action. Lesson: Telling stories through interactive media helps our community grow outside of the virtual world.

7.After four years of @techsoup weekly Friday meetings in Second Life we maxed out our sim with 99 guests to hear Lindens talk about bringing teens and adults together in the new mixed grid. Lesson: never underestimate how many people will appear when the right guest shows up!

Looking forward, how can we take our best assets and build stronger virtual communities for nonprofits?

1.Integrating youth and adults in one virtual place will allow for many new educational and volunteer opportunities along with a potential infusion of young energy

2.ReactionGrid, OSGrid and various open sims are available at low cost to nonprofits, making it accessible for organizations to own their own servers or create larger simulation experiences

3.Building bridges between worlds, hypergrid tours and cross-sector partnerships will be even more important as we connect beyond Nonprofit Commons in Second Life

4.Educational experiences, museums and nonprofits that create immersion experiences in virtual space will find participation growing, especially as user content is featured in galleries and exhibition halls around the world

5.Embracing young, saavy programmers who are excited to help their favorite causes will be the tipping point for many organizations looking to grow and try new endeavors

6.Invite more gamechangers and respected leaders from various sectors to help us open new doors, dream big and make new connections across the grids

7.Playfulness and fun storytelling elements connect people over time and grow a sticky network of engaged leaders. Be intentional about designing play that offers various ways to plug in and random people will find you and get involved!

So on this 1/11/11 it is our hope as the avatars of Nonprofit Commons that you are taking time to do something new, build a bridge and be the best you can be. Never settle for the status quo when you can be extraordinary – every avatar at NPC embodies this in some way and together we create a community that is unique in its resilience, a pillar in the ever-shifting 3D web world. Being that pillar requires all of us to live out the commitments we’ve made to our people, to volunteerism within NPC and to continually reach out beyond ourselves and represent alteratives to the rigidness of our real world. Each of us has learned to craft our own experience, choose our own adventure and share some piece of that through photos, machinima, blogs and tweets. Keep sharing and remember that we create this experience every day together and we choose how to make the most of it!

Special thanks to the leaders at Nonprofit Commons for their hard work along with Rik Riel, Rhiannon Chatnoir and Pathfinder for their amazing blog writing looking ahead to 2011 in virtual engagement.

Written by: InKenzo

Sampling Nonprofits: Collected Thoughts on JUMO

After a week in the nonprofit world Jumo is making waves for its big push around nonprofit discovery via social networking. Is it working? We’ve sampled blogs from TechSoup community leaders in this post to help you determine whether investing time on JUMO is right for your organization.

Amy Sample Ward


As you may have heard, Jumo is now open in beta. What is Jumo? As Mashable reports, “Jumo was designed to let users find, follow and support the causes important to them, and with 3,500 organizations on board at launch, would-be philanthropists should be able to find and follow something of interest upon joining. (For comparison’s sake — Apple’s Ping had 2,000 artists two months out of the gate.)”

Functionality: Persistence
So far, trying to navigate the site to browse or set up a profile has about a 50/50 chance of hitting either a 504 or 500 error page. It’s been quite a frustrating process, especially when inputting 33 different countries one by one in the “where we work” section just to have the “save” not work. It is in beta, let’s not forget! So, patience and persistence are the keys to success. I’m always the first to admit I’m not patient, but I persistence this morning has gotten me pretty deep into the site – so keep refreshing your browser and you’ll get through!

Facebook Requirements
It seems that you have to have an organizational presence on facebook in order for the project page on Jumo to work/look right – I put in my facebook ID, thinking it was verifying my association as the admin on the organizational account, but instead it put my photo and info as the organization’s! I’m not sure that organizations will want to maintain, or create, a profile on facebook just as a ticket to using Jumo. Is this experience correct – have others found this to be true?

Transparency
Here’s the screen shot for the TechSoup Global page on Jumo. I am following the organization and am an administrator on the page – doesn’t appear to show either of those facts!

I’m also not finding any way to customize the URL so that users could more easily find, and I could more easily share/promote the page.

Messaging
I’ve had quite a string of issues with the messaging in Jumo. Here are some of the posts I’ve shared this morning with members of a social media for nonprofits group in facebook:
* when I try posting on people’s pages, it doesn’t appear to go through, but then they say they get 4 emails telling them about it (this is what one contact reported after I posted on his wall);
* when I tried posting an update on my own page it went through twice! Just checked back and Jumo deleted the second/double post but the diction is very strange! “Amy Sample Ward wrote on her/her profile:”
* I just posted on Beth’s wall on jumo and left the “post to facebook” box checked to see if it would post on her or my facebook wall as well, but it doesn’t seem to have done so.
* Also interesting, that it let me post on Beth’s wall (if the Jumo terms use “wall”) even though we weren’t following each other. Could mean that users don’t have a way to manage the amount of posts (read: spam) that could get through to them…
* I got an error that said only letters, spaces and punctuation were allowed… no numbers?!

The reason a site for finding and following causes you care about has social features is because it isn’t just the organizations we care about that we like to follow, but also the people we care about. If a friend or family member donates to an organization, starts or shepherds a campaign, or shares an appeal for support, data has shown that we are more likely to listen and even take action – we trust our friends and family and listen to what they say more than just ads or mass-messages. So, finding and following the people we want to listen to should certainly be easier in Jumo!

Purpose
As Tom Watson posted in a facebook group this morning, what’s the point?….does the nuance between the two platforms come down to “action” or something else? Organizations that I am or could follow are on both platforms, so what is the deciding factor influencing their strategy for engagement on the platform and the deciding factor for which platform I use to connect with them?

Beyond a Platform
Beyond this platform or that one, why do you, as an individual who is passionate about a cause, want to connect directly with a nonprofit organization online? Is it to take action – online? or off?  Is it to know what they are doing and how they use the funds you may have given them? Is it to see if they are worth your donations or volunteer hours? How does your purpose for engagement influence your choice of platform?

Daniel Ben-Horin

When I first heard about Jumo quite a few months ago, I reacted basically as Tom Watson did, though more snarkily. Subsquently, a mutual friend brokered a call between Chris and me. He’s obviously a smart guy and he’s trying to do good in the world. I think it’s important that we in the nonprofit tech space stay open to new ideas, projects, people in our space, and don’t hold it against the the newbies that they are able to raise money easily or maybe haven’t paid what we might consider the appropriate dues. There’s no growth if we try to pull up the drawbridge behind us. That said, my feeling talking to Chris was that he was kind of checking off a box. I sensed he had received blowback for not having talked to enough NPO folks and was remedying that, but was very much in love with his concept, and wasn’t really open to revisiting his paradigm. He was going to do what he was going to do and our call felt very pro forma. I wouldn’t say that Ami, Greg or Ben of Idealist V’match and Change.org missed a whole lot, though of course if he was going to reach out to the field, Chris should have reached out to the orgs that are most active in the corner he wishes to inhabit.

But I think we should take a long view here. It is not foreordained that Jumo will ‘sweep away the competition.’ This is a different environment than the more or less purely social one of FB. With all his dough and pedigree, Chris and his team will still have to earn trust in order to succeed, and it’s not clear to me how well they understand that or how they expect to address that need. Frankly, Chris’s round of interviews notwithstanding, I think they have a *huge* learning curve about the npo sector and the ngo sector and civil society generally. Basically, I think the right approach is the one Amy is taking here–Try to understand what they are offering…withhold judgment as much as possible…openmindedly try to make Jumo ‘work’ for our organizations and causes….learn by doing so and hope they learn too. While it is frustrating to have tech glitches, let s/he among us who is without sin in that regard cast the first stone! I don’t see much point in castigating them for being pre-alpha rather than Beta. In general, the proof is in the benefits they provide for social change and I think that our community’s reaction should be focused on that, which will take some time to reveal itself.

The Jumo project reminds me a bit of when AOL Foundation set up Helping.org in late 90’s. I had funders tell me they wouldn’t support TechSoup because Goliath was clearly going to win this one. Didn’t happen that way after all, and I attribute the results to the much closer relationship we had to actual on the ground nonprofits. Idealist, V’match, Change.org (and I’d certainly add Wiser Earth to this list) have built up really committed followings. Jumo has a long way to go to get there.

On the other hand, none of us has built Facebook and we all talk about scale, reaching more people, getting beyond the circle of hard core activists etc. It’s conceivable that Chris and Jumo have something to teach us there. I’d like to find out.

Evonne Heyning

Five years ago we would muse with catalysts at the Omidyar Network about relationship networks, reputation and trust and the essentials of building strong communities of change for both local and global impact. Today some of those ideas have come to fruition with platforms like Change.org, Wiser Earth, Ushahidi, Quora, LinkedIn and Twitter campaigns. As many of us have worked together and cross paths frequently in the ethers there’s been a desire to track those engagements and understand true reputation through our work over time, mapping the most prolific leaders with great questions & endeavors like we do on the TechSoup Forums.

Jumo released to the public in the last 24 hours and has the potential to fill the gap between great people and great endeavors in a different way than Change.org, LinkedIn or Wiser Earth manages to do. Unfortunately it seems Jumo may have more interest in the transactional economy of giving than the relationship economy it has the potential to grow, becoming a philanthropic passthrough that takes a cut higher than most fiscal sponsors, but lower than the United Way. So far it functions very closely to the Causes function on Facebook, more like Razoo. It’s a start, but personally I want a real economy of contribution that goes deeper than dollars.

Tracking followers simply in the Quora fashion is a nice and elegant way to see who influences who but it lacks any sort of qualification or indication of endorsement. Recommendations in LinkedIn are more helpful but a star/point system would allow for users to vote up their favorite leaders and catalysts in various fields.

I value social action networks with indicators to vote up submissions to the creative economy. If you imagine each post, video or photo as an asset in the marketplace of Facebook or Twitter I want the ability to be able to give extra stars, points or fiery dragons to the people who are submitting the best possible solutions. The LIKE button is ok but I’d rather have 30 stars a day and have the ability to blow 5 stars on the best link or photo. I believe that this mix of a creative economy and reputation-associated relationship building will allow us to find collaborators and get things done more effectively in less time.

So far the social action networks that have sprung up to get things done quickly include Ushahidi, the Crisis Camps/Crisis Commons movements and Twitter social campaigns. Most of these have required the frequent use of googledocs and wikis to manage collaborative information across wide virtual teams and lack the ability to track the backend of engagement well as we look to reward those who are getting the most done.

Any tool that helps us leverage more for less is helpful….for now the tools that are helping me the most to create social change ripples include Twitter, Quora, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook. For now the social action networks like Change.org and Jumo offer enough for me to chime in once or twice, but I’m not seeing enough sticky reasons to keep coming back to share new endeavors. Is there a future for a philanthropic discovery site like Jumo that does not push regular emails or curated updates? Would you keep going back, or are you having better experiences with other social action networks?

Allyson Kapin


Are niche social networks the best way to mobilize people and channel their energy into supporting nonprofits? Will it turn more people into repeat donors and committed activists?

…. While Jumo has some cool Facebook integration, Twitter-like features and uses an algorithm to suggest projects and issues, many nonprofit campaigners say it needs to do much more to make it a valuable online social community that will lead to a deeper engagement.
“Jumo needs to question what makes them different, does the cause marketplace really need them, who will use the platform, and how will it be marketed to them,” said Geoff Livingston.

“I don’t see Jumo, at least right now, filling a gap,” said Amy Sample Ward of TechSoup Global. “I’d love to see a platform that is focused on action: finding actionable opportunities (Social Actions made great impact here), taking action (helping people find others to do it with them, build trust, form a community, etc.), and then report/display the results of the actions.”

……Hughes is a smart entrepreneur. Hopefully, he will listen to the nonprofit community’s feedback and adapt Jumo to connect people to nonprofits that truly move people up the ladder of engagement.

Jessica Dally

My biggest thought on Jumo has to do with why I use other social sites and that comes down to getting information out to people who aren’t working in the NPO sector.  Certainly meeting, discussing and connecting with other NPO’s is TERRIBLY important but for much of my work in the past and currently, getting information out to people who are not in the field is equally important and this is where I wonder about time spent in Jumo.  Sure, there’s a lot of NPO’s there for obvious reasons, but I have yet to find anyone there who isn’t also on FB or twitter.  Every new tool creates more work and with smaller orgs with little ability to really hit every tool I can’t help but think that this is not a good use of time that could be spent reaching out to their community on Facebook or Twitter.

All this said, it’s way too soon to know if it’s great or not but likely I wouldn’t want to invest a ton of time there until I see it grow into something far better than it is now.  Something more stable and with a better vision.

Evonne’s Summary:

Jumo is VERY beta and they’re catching up with tech bugs.  They’re smart but not always asking the right questions when it comes to filling gaps in engagement or action for nonprofits. Jumo is focused on FIND FOLLOW SUPPORT: a discovery space for giving to new organizations.  Volunteerism beyond posting a note to friends is nonexistant in this space and money is the only currency that counts.

Jumo’s topical navigation will serve smaller nonprofits well who jump on early, carve a niche and build a big fan base: however at this early stage it’s hard to tell if the total fundraising capacity will be any stronger than Causes on Facebook. Thankfully it requires little maintenance and should not be a big time drain for your social media leaders.

Written by: InKenzo

Last day to vote for NTC2011 Panel Events!

For those in the nonprofit technology community who love the yearly Nonprofit Technology Conference, we have a few treats in store for 2011 and we hope to see you in DC next March. Take a moment TODAY and vote for two panels to be presented by the @npsl team led by Glitteractica Cookie with Kali Izdiak.

Do you ever work remotely with others? This leadership panel is for you:

Working with a Distributed Team

http://www.nten.org/node/10465

Wonder how we are able to produce events across four or more online channels at once and listen to everyone?

Multiple Channels of Engagement: The next generation of live online (Hyper-real) events

http://www.nten.org/node/10464

Take a minute to give us extra stars and we will do our best to give you a great series of workshop panels at NTC2011.

Written by: InKenzo

Weekly Update from Nonprofit Commons

Events this week:
Free Webinar on Tuesday 9/21 at 11AM PST:
Social Media Decision Making http://bit.ly/cdzj5N

Online Community MeetUp Wednesday night 9/22, 7PM PST in San Francisco
Hope you can join us in person, online or via Second Life inworld at the Plush Nonprofit Commons:
http://www.meetup.com/octribe/calendar/14233243/

8:30AM PST Friday meeting at the Plush Nonprofit Commons Amphitheatre
Join us this FRIDAY AM for Meet Your Neighbor and other nonprofit technology leaders at http://bit.ly/nonprofitcommons

Last week at the NPC:

* Ana Farber, a PhD down at University of Texas, Austin has invited us to participate in the SLActions Conference, abstracts are due by September 30th at www.slactions.org with chapters all over the world.

* Jenelle Levenque shared the Transgender American Veterans Association: http://tavausa.org/ educates government agencies on the needs of their transgendered constituents. Scheduled office hours inworld are Fridays from 0730 to 0830 and Murray or Alana Haefnir are also inworld to take your questions.

* Penguin (Megan at TechSoup Global) shared the FORUMS and here’s a full list of topics: http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=15 All are invited to participate online and share their knowledge! Ninlil (Layal) also made a video tutorial on how to do this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sgyD5Opxwg

TechSoup Technology Help Desk Office Hours
TechSoup has answered the community’s technology questions via telephone, email, and on TechSoup’s forums. This has also begun to occur on TechSoup’s social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook groups. In keeping with this tradition, we have decided to experiment with TechSoup Technology Help Desk Office Hours inside Second Life to include all sorts of social media & technology questions.

Times are Tue 4-5pm, Wed 4-5pm, Thu 5-6pm, all times are Pacific.
We are also open to your recommendations, please read more information about: http://bit.ly/TSHelpDesk

Reminder: Submit your Projects to the FACT Social Justice Challenge at NetSquared
The French American Charitable Trust (FACT) and NetSquared are pleased to announce the second annual FACT Social Justice Awards. Submissions are now open for your innovative Projects that leverage web and/or mobile technologies to foster collaboration around social justice issues. Learn more about the Challenge and how to participate here: http://netsquared.org/challenges/fact-social-justice-2010

From Laura at Horsenet in MD: Our rescue is taking part in the Petfinder Shelter Challenge. Shelters with the most votes are eligible for grants. Please help us win by voting daily from today through 12/19. Go to http://bit.ly/horsenetvote and search “HorseNet Horse Rescue” in Mount Airy, MD to vote.

An Easy Inworld Tip:
There are tons of classes on building, scripting, machinima production, even working with the new meshes that Second Life is now releasing for fully sculpted objects that look more real than ever before. For more detail on Linden Lab’s progress on MESH SUPPORT that will allow imports from 3D design programs, see this blog post: http://changingworldsbuildingdreams.com/the-status-of-mesh-support-in-se…

Every week inworld we share these links to our community sites:
Nonprofit Commons blog & wiki
http://www.nonprofitcommons.org/
Twitter:
@npsl http://www.twitter.com/npsl
Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/TechSoup-Second-Life
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/nonprofitcommons
LinkedIn:
http://linkd.in/NonprofitCommons
Weekly Networking Event: Wharf Ratz, Aloft every Tues., 8PM SLT
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aloft%20Nonprofit%20Commons/162/236/2
Monthly Networking Event: The first Thurs. of every month, at Common Ground, Plush, 5 -7PM SLT
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Nonprofit%20Commons/128/220/26
Avatars United:
http://www.avatarsunited.com/groups/nonprofitcom

Thank you for your contributions to the Nonprofit Commons! Stay in touch: nonprofitcommons@techsoup.org

Written by: InKenzo

Nonprofit Commons Weekly Update for September 13, 2010

Weekly Update from the Nonprofit Commons

Events this week:
The new and improved TechSoup.org site is live!
Check it out and let us know any feedback you have. http://ow.ly/2Dy2n

8:30AM Friday meeting at Plush Nonprofit Commons Amphitheatre
Join us this FRIDAY AM http://bit.ly/nonprofitcommons

Weekly Networking Event:
Wharf Ratz, Aloft every Tues., 8PM SLT
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aloft%20Nonprofit%20Commons/162/236/2

The next Online Community Managers Meetup in San Francisco will also be available in Second Life!
Don’t miss guest speaker, Randy Farmer, creator of the first virtual world, speaking on reputation systems.
Join us live September 22 at 7PM http://www.meetup.com/octribe/calendar/14233243/

Last week at the NPC:
Ellie Brewster came to share the Women’s Virtual Community Project:
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/collingwood7/minerva/events.html
Events for 2010-2011 will be announced on 9/15 for inworld classes and events.

In the meeting we discussed Heat Maps, metrics and visits to NPC, how we can look at engagement on our sims and where people flow through and stay involved.

NPC  Heat Map

This is one example of a heat map at NPC from the Summer of 2010. We can get a good glimpse of the walkways and main traffic patterns (typically walking along designated paths around event/common areas) and see what offices are most popular for visits.

We discussed where people leave from and arrive to (typically advertised spaces and event spaces) and also looked at the demographics of our visitors by country – 22 countries involved in NPC this summer.

We have a handful of tenants and guests who have been to the commons hundreds of times, most come for a visit every 1-7 days. We will contact tenants who have not been back in the last few months to encourage return visits and online organizing at NPC. Evonne (In Kenzo) will work with Parhelion Parou, Buffy Beale, Brena Benoir, Ninlil, Kali & YOU to make sure that pathways and public spaces are easy to navigate as we find interesting ways to spotlight NPC. Ideas are welcome.

Ninlil Xentiltat followed up brainstorming about how to better provide services in this community. Do you have a suggestion to add? Email nonprofitcommons@techsoup.org or start a conversation online. If you want to volunteer or find a volunteer to help you with a specific endeavor, visit our wiki page: http://npsl.wiki.techsoup.org/volunteers and find Ninlil inworld.

More on Statistics, Insights & Engagement

We are processing the insights on our primary social media sites: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life & Google. We are finding that there are over 300 of you who are active here with 339 “likes” on Facebook. On average 50+ of you are actively engaging with us on Facebook. On Twitter we have 780 followers! In 2010 the TechSoupVideo YouTube pages are getting the highest traffic on our Second Life-related videos and machinima.

Here’s our Facebook page demographics for age and country/languages:

Facebook page demographics

Reminder: Submit your Projects to the FACT Social Justice Challenge at NetSquared
The French American Charitable Trust (FACT) and NetSquared are pleased to announce the second annual FACT Social Justice Awards. Submissions are now open for your innovative Projects that leverage web and/or mobile technologies to foster collaboration around social justice issues. Learn more about the Challenge and how to participate here: http://netsquared.org/challenges/fact-social-justice-2010

TechSoup Talks! Webinars take place on September 21 and 30.

Inworld we share these links to our community sites:
Nonprofit Commons blog
http://www.nonprofitcommons.org/
LinkedIn:
http://linkd.in/NonprofitCommons

Thank you for your contributions to the Nonprofit Commons! Stay in touch: nonprofitcommons@techsoup.org

~In Kenzo, Nonprofit Commons Scribe~

Written by: InKenzo