Author: Nonprofit Commons

Posted on

A nice directory of worksafe SL destinations: SecondLife with a purpose, other than the seedy kind

I found this site has reviews of sims and events that are the kind that our group is interested in. They are a good place to visit if you encounter a little skepticism at your organization when you are trying to preach the joy and importance of SL.

http://www.secondseeker.com/

They have a health and education category, but no nonprofit-specific one. Do you all think we could be their source for this category? I found this Charity Category and I wonder if there was some way that we could cross-pollinate our sites. Any ideas?

Written by: Glitteractica_Cookie

Posted on

Pride 2007 Festival coming June 24-30

Secondpride
PixelPulse Magazine sends out news that plans are underway for "Second Pride 2007" in Second Life, a celebration of diversity in sexual identity bringing together gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals and queer-friendly straights from all over the metaverse.  Schedule from June 24-30, one centerpiece of the event will be a enormous virtual AIDS Memorial Quilt bringing together 720 individual panels.  Information on how to submit a panel can be found here.

Plans for the Second Pride Festival include art exhibits, dancing, musical performances, a theater troupe, vendors, games, and a museum highlighting the historical significance of Pride. To learn how you can help out, head for their Google Group.

Written by: rikomatic

Posted on

Reflections on Walk the World Fight Hunger Second Life Event


From Fight Hunger’s Flickr Stream.  More photos of real life and virtual world event here.

Susanne Thornqvst of Fight Hunger shared a report on the Walk the World Event on May 13th.  Rik Riel has blogged it over t here.

I did a follow up interview with Susanne to find out what they learned.

1.   What took place in Second Life for Walk the World on Sunday? 

On 13 May hundreds of thousands of people all over the world joined in an effort to raise awareness about child hunger and funds to WFP’s School Feeding Programme. This year we wanted to find new ways of spreading the word, and decided to also use Second Life. We had two walking paths on the island Dragon Moon for people to walk and we had live entertainment for 24 hours to cover all the time zones and reflect the events that were going on all over the world at the same time. Almost 400 avatars showed up and we raised over 1000 US dollars.

2.  What were the benefits to adding a Second Life component to the established event?

By adding the Second Life component we were able to reach people we would never have reached with our traditional events. Especially in the US and Europe were you have so many fundraising events, activities and walks for various causes it is difficult to gather and enthusiasm people to join, but in Second Life these activities are rather new and therefore people are eager to help and contribute.

3.  What was your strategy for promoting the Second Life component?

We mainly promoted the event within the Second Life community but also in various real world blogs. We also got some advertising for the Second Life walk thanks to being mentioned as a new approach in various newspaper articles covering the real world walks.  (Beth’s note:  Rik Riel has some tips about promoting virtual events)

4.  Did anything surprise you about the Second Life event component?

What surprised us the most was the friendly atmosphere and all people wanting to help us with our goal of ending child hunger, especially Ariel Finsbury, Nyna Slate and Demian Caldera who worked very hard to make the event a success.  We also had about 20 musicians who played live for us during the event, even though many of them live in the US were they the same day were celebrating mothers day.

5.  Based on your experience, what advice would you give to others doing an inworld fundraising event?

We were completely new to Second Life, and we could never have done it without the help of our wonderful volunteers. So my biggest advice is to gather a group of dedicated volunteers that knows about Second Life and they can give you advice on what would work or not in Second Life. It also helps to be open minded to new technology approaches and using your imagination.

6. Do you think based on your experience and the results, you’ll continue to have a Second Life Component? 

Yes we will definitely look into having more activities in Second Life! Our list of ideas just keeps growing! We would like as many people as possible to join in and Fight Hunger in the world, and Second Life is excellent for community building and reaching a new audience.

Written by: kanter

Posted on

Report on “Fight Hunger: Walk the World” event on May 13

Susanne Thörnqvist sends us a report on the
“>”Fight Hunger: Walk the World” event on May 13. She comments that “the event would not have been possible without the help of our wonderful and dedicated volunteers in Second Life and all the musicians who dedicated their time to play live for us.”

Number of people attending: More than 380
Funds raised during the 24 hours event:

  • Funds raised from donation boxes 244,379 linden dollars
  • Shoe sales 2000 linden dollars
  • Total donation boxes and shoe sales 864 USD
  • FightHunger.org donations to Second Life walk 162 USD
  • Sponsored walker 34 USD
  • Click-to-feed 30 USD
    Total amount raised 1090 USD

    Explanation click-to-feed: We had 155 clicks, meaning that our sponsors will provide a meal at school to 155 children, for a cost of 0.19 USD/child/day.

    Pictures of the event at http://www.fighthunger.org/en/wtw07/2l/second_life

Written by: rikomatic

Posted on

Eventful

Eventful is a social networking site that allows loose or formal groups to create gatherings. Groups can be based on physical location, interests, subjects, and events.

You can create groups or join groups that you have interest in. You can search through the many groups that are available through a system based search engine.

To use Eventful, you first need to set up a user account. To register, click on the top right register link. Registration requires an email address, username, password, zip code, and year of birth. You must accept the terms of service. It takes about a minute.

Once you have registered you can begin to create and/or join groups. To join a group, find a group you are interested in. Towards the right top corner of the screen, you will see a button labled "Join this group". Once you are a member of a group you may post events to that group.

Eventful also allows you to generate a "widget" that you can post on your own site. This widget will pull an RSS feed from the group you are interested in and display those results on your site. From that widget you can subscribe to the RSS feed or pull data directly into iCAL.

We’ve integrated a widget into this site to follow events from the nonprofits in secondlife members.

Written by: Creech

Posted on

Free avatar makeovers for cancer survivors

The Metaverse Messenger is proud to host Digital Do Overs: Survivor Edition

What is it?
In partnership with SL Relay For Life, the Metaverse Messenger Fashion Angels will be hosting 4 makeovers over the next several weeks of in-world cancer survivors. Makeovers will be chronicled in the M2 and featured in our weekly paper.

Why?
In addition raising funds for the its life-saving mission, RFL aims to educate it’s community on the many services and offerings of the American Cancer Society. Through these makeovers, our goal is to honor and pamper in-world cancer survivors and raise awareness for the ACS program Look Good, Feel Better, which educates women who have lost hair due to treatment how to apply makeup, wear wigs, and do things to become more comfortable with their appearance during their fight with this terrible disease.

Who do we need involved?
We are looking for four cancer survivors with current SL avatars that are in need of a makeover. Still got that “newbie” look? Then we need you!

How much time is involved?
If you are chose and agree to participate, expect to spend about 3 hours over the period of a week with your assigned Fashion Angel.

1. “Before” photo session
2. Interview to understand your desired style and look, and learn more about you, your story, and your involvement with the ACS
3. SHOPPING!
4. “After” photo session

If you are interested in nominating someone, please send *IN A FOLDER TITLED DDO NOMINATION* a snapshot and a quick notecard about the person nominated to Madison Donnelly by Monday, May 21st.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!

Yours in the fight,
Madison Donnelly
Fashion Editor
The Metaverse Messenger

Written by: Glitteractica_Cookie

Posted on

SCION AND MOVIETICKETS.COM PRESENT THE FIRST-EVER MS FLY IN SECOND LIFE

Help achieve a world free of multiple sclerosis (MS) by soaring into the virtual world June 11th through 17th. The MS Fly – an expansion of the National MS Societyʼs successful annual walk, is an engaging and interactive adventure dedicated to ending the unpredictable and chronic disease.

Participate in this exciting and cause-worthy event on a week-long scavenger hunt as you journey through the virtual world of Second Life with your avatar and MS Cape. Scour islands for digital tokens that grant you completion of one phase of the hunt. With each new digital token acquired comes a new incentive for the participant and more money to help end MS.

MS stops more than 2.5 million people worldwide from moving. The National MS Society exists to make sure it doesnʼt.

Itʼs Time to Fly! Register now at www.themsfly.org

Written by: kanter

Posted on

Four Quick Tips to Publicize Your Non-profit Event

A key strategy for raising the visibility of your non-profit in Second Life is organizing in-world events. There are hundreds and hundreds of events occurring on a given day competing for avatars’ attention and attendance. So learning how to publicize your non-profits events is an important skill to develop.

1. Use the SL Calendar

The first action to consider is publishing your event on the official SL events calendar. This listing is available both in-world under “search” and on the web at http://www.secondlife.com/events . While there is a lot of crap in there, the official event listings are still the easiest way for all SL residents to find out about what events are happening on a given day. Be as clear and concise and eye-catching as you can possibly be — without resorting to “FREE LINDENS” and other annoying gimmicks.

2. Draw on Your Own Community

Your promotion activities only begin with the official SL calendar. Obviously if you have your own website and land, post notices about the event well ahead of time. Use your group’s (you do have an in-world group set up for your non-profit, don’t you?) announcement feature to inform your own constituents and supporters about the event. Make sure each of your supporters and members is encouraged to invite their friends and colleagues. That’s the power of social networking and the “Kevin Bacon” effect.

3. The SL Media / Blogosphere

Beyond that, get the word out to as many different news sources as you can. The SL blogosphere is huge and expanding, as are the number of SL media outlets. The biggies include the SL Herald, the SL Insider, New World Notes, Avastar, the Reuters SL bureau, and the Metaverse Messenger. See the awesome SL blog aggregator created by Tao Takashi, http://planet.worldofsl.com, for other news sources to reach out to.

4. Real World Press

And don’t forget real world press. If your event has a unique angle to it that might be of interest to a specialized news source, draft up a press release and send it out to them. If you can get some advance press, you can drive new people to register for SL just to attend it. SL is still quite a powerful media-magnet, so take advantage while you can.

While we are talking about events, let me point out the sweet social calendaring website http://Eventful.com, which takes the official SL events feed and repackages it in a really cool and useful way.

Using Eventful.com you can set “Second Life” as one of your home locations, search for events by keyword, tick-off the events that you want to track or attend, create custom calendars and groups, and export those calendars to Outlook, iCal or Google Calendar. You can see the feed from the Eventful group as a widget on the right side of this post. You can add a similar widget to your own website or blog super-easily. Check it out!

With a bit of effort and creativity, you can go from “preaching to the converted” to maxing out your sim. Good luck.

Written by: rikomatic

Posted on

Second Life in Education Discussion

Via Cogdog Flickr Stream

Yesterday on Twitter,  Alan Levine (cogdog) started tweeting about a Stephen Downes talk in Second Life.

Cogdog barked a few tweets:

"Stephen Downes is speaking Second Life"
"Stephen Downes hammering SL "like Star Trek… with casinos"
"The guy secretly loves second life …"

Crap, I’d love to listen to that session live, but I had a few deadlines.   Luckily, Cogdog left some good markings so I could find the url and return later.

What a great example of leaving breadcrumbs across social media sites to enhance findability.  But wait it gets better …

I left a tweet (or was a it a treat) for CogDog

@cogdog you need to use the flickr fdtoys and add something [on the flickr photo]

Cogdog responded with:

@kanter you had to ask … [see flickr photo]

So, not only do we have the findability, but we increase the potential for adhoc collaboration.

So, I was waiting for the blog posts about the session to filter out to the blogosphere, but I had not time to track them down.    So, was glad that Stephen Downes provided pointers to a few and some reflections:

Good summary of the proceedings from yesterday’s Eduserv conference on Second Life. My only quibble is that the advice, "Second Life is here, now – use it," does not recognize the existence of various alternatives, a number of which were mentioned by several panelists. See also this summary  by Shirley Williams. And Kathryn Greenhill offers a really nice detailed summary.  Jo Kay stayed up ’til  one a.m.  to watch my talk and then was disappointed, not because she disagreed with me, but because the wanted to see more emphasis on the projects and the potential. Fine – and  that’s what the other five speakers provided. And if I hadn’t raised the issues (which are genuine) nobody would  have. Is that a fair way to treat people who are trying to  learn about the technology?  Angela Thomas, meanwhile, posted a summary of the sessions as seen through Second Life.   Andrew Stewart‘s longish commentary, to which I’ve added a comment clarifying part of my argument. Barbara Dieu also commented, saying that my criticisms should not prevent people from experimenting with Second Life. I don’t think I ever said that – but I would certainly recommend caution before making a large financial investment.

I think I’ll watch the 3D space a bit more closely in the future, with an eye to mapping out a strategy, the outlines of which I stated in my talk yesterday.

Some of the reflections and criticisms are similar in the nonprofit space. What do you think?

Written by: kanter