Nonprofits Will Face Budget Cuts

The main source of federal funding may face the major budget cuts and possible elimination. Thus, some service organizations in Lawrenceville which help people to be kept from hunger and homelessness are expected to face a harsh reality. The federal program, called the Emergency Food and Shelter Program, that assists the local organizations to help people in immediate need in a form of cash advance or just money, has faced the budget cuts in Washington.

According to the latest reports, the Norcross co-op got $172,000 in EFSP funds last year and the amount of over $500,000 was distributed to nonprofit service organizations county-wide. However, the bill of federal appropriations hasn’t been passed, therefore, the EFSP just doesn’t have available funds to support the grants in the fiscal year 2011.

Written by: SusanM

2011 Land Pricing and the Nonprofit Commons

On Monday, October 4th, we were alerted to a blog post by Nelson Linden announcing that Linden Lab would be removing the discounts provided to the non-profit and education sims. There were a lot of comments flooding into the blog post, and Twitter was abuzz with Second Lifers with their speculations.

We immediately sent out the following response to the news:

“We are committed to remain a free space for nonprofits, and we hope we can help provide space to newly displaced nonprofit and social benefit orgs who will be forced to move because of the rent-hike.”

As of the writing of this post, there have been over 200 comments posted on Nelson Linden’s blog entry. It is a great sign to have this many concerned Second Life residents, and it will hopefully inspire them all to work together in finding solutions for these concerns.

John Lester, aka Pathfinder, a champion of the nonprofit and education causes in Second Life, wrote a great blog post discussing these changes. I think he summed it up best when he said:

“I’m happy the discount lasted as long as it did.  As for the reasoning behind this new decision by Linden Lab, I have no idea and I’m not interested in speculating.  What I’m interested in is the future of educators and non-profits in virtual worlds in general.”

We, at the Nonprofit Commons completely agree with his interest in looking to the future for educators and nonprofits.

We hope that you can join us at this Friday’s meeting, where we are having Terrance Linden speak about the migration of the teen grid members over to the main grid. It may be a good chance to ask your questions to a live Linden who has the inside scoop.

Also at the meeting we have social media for Nonprofits expert Amy Sample Ward , to discuss NetSquared and the FACT Social Justice Challenge

We welcome any members of the Second Life community to discuss the situation on our Google Group. Rik Panagibian , from Global Kids , started the discussion here . Feel free to join him and continue the conversation with us.

For those of you that would like to connect with us to discuss this, we can be found on the web at the following places:

Nonprofit Commons blog

Wiki

Twitter @npsl

Google Group

TechSoup

Facebook

LinkedIn

Weekly Networking Event: Wharf Ratz, Aloft every Tues., 8PM SLT

Monthly Networking Event: The first Thurs. of every month, at Common Ground , Plush, 5 -7PM SLT

Written by: Layal

NEA Funding Increase Approved by House Committee

Today, the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, approved a budget for the National Endowment for the Arts of $160 million. This is a proposed increase of $35 million over funding in FY 2007. This represents the largest increase in many years.

This is great news for Arts nonprofits in the United States.

The American Arts Alliance has posted a summary and a way to say "Thank-you" the committee members.

Written by: Creech