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Nonprofit Commons in Second Life

Through the Nonprofit Commons project, TechSoup is assembling a community of nonprofits in Second Life to help lower the barriers of access to this emerging virtual world

Nonprofit Commons in Second Life

• Through this community, we provide free office space to qualifying groups, hold meetings, create a cooperative supportive learning environment and foster outreach, education, fundraising, all in a virtual space.

• Our goal is to create a learning community of practice for nonprofits to explore and learn about the virtual world, and to investigate the many ways in which nonprofits can utilize this unique environment.

• 300 Total Members• Over 60 Countries represented among

NPC participants • 1300 people attended 40 meetings in world• 79 unique avatars attended since Mar

2007• 32 NPC Tenant Organizations• 1143 unique visitors to the NPC Blog• 100 avatars in world and 70 people in the

RL room at the Mixed Reality Event

REACH

Key Performance Metrics

Leadership and assistance through virtual community organizing

• In-world Meetings• Wiki• Website/community blog• NPSL tag• Management steering committee group• Directory of Nonprofits in SL• Branding as NPO experts and advisors to all new orgs in-world

Raising public awareness of Nonprofits in Second Life through the media . . .

• New York Times • Contribute Magazine – Cover Story in

Upcoming September Issue

• New Scientist – Upcoming September Issue

• Launch Squad

• KQED California Report • Nonprofit Times- Upcoming Issue

. . . and at Conferences across the country

• SuperNova, San Francisco 2007

• Games4Change, New York 2007

• SLCC, San Francisco 2006 & Chicago 2007

• BlogHerSL Conference, 2007

• Online Community UnConference, Silicon Valley 2007

• Northern California Grantmakers Briefing, San Francisco, 2007

• California Association of Nonprofits Conference, Upcoming Fall 2007

Real wealth, virtual philanthropy, andthe birth of the Nonprofit Commons

• The Commons was generously donated by Anshe Chung, the first person to become a millionaire in RL, by selling virtual goods and services. 

• Guntram Graef, Anshe's partner, attended the SLCC last year and saw my talk on NPOs and SL.

• Following the talk, he offered me the management and ownership of the Nonprofit Commons, provided we select the groups and keep the space active. 

• Launched in August 2007,• 32 organizations currently building

out their free office spaces. • We have a plan to grow and

expand!

NPC provides virtual offices to 32 organizations in a community setting

A Valuable tool for Nonprofits

• It costs virtually nothing to build a location in Second Life.

• Nonprofits can use the tool to raise funds (for example, the American Cancer Society's virtual Relay 4 Life just raised $115,000

• Second Life offers a safe and anonymous means of self-expression.

• Second Life provides a space for the impossible to happen (for example, Simon Stevens, Community liaison and SL group Wheelies (disability nightclub) [June issue of newsweek] a group of adults with disabilities use SL interact in an environment without the physical constraints they experience in the real world).

• By meeting people in world you are reducing emissions and your carbon footprint

NPC tenants in Action: Information, Communication, and Inspiration

• Support Groups (for ex.AA,NA,Transgender Resource ctr.)

• Awareness-building• Fundraising• Teaching/Learning new

graphics/building skills• Demonstrating the impossible

(A human heart sim built as a proof of concept experiment by Jeremy Kemp the host of SimTeach, a comm. for educators using virtual environments )

• Creating Community far and wide w/International orgs

Opportunities for Partnership

1. Increase NPC capacity

2. Build Reusable Tools

3. Conduct 2 Awareness and Action Campaigns

4. Organize Events both Virtual and Mixed Reality

5. Foster a SL Developer Network for Nonprofits

6. Evaluate Impact of Virtual Community in NPC

Goal 1: Increase NPC Capacity

• Develop additional sims

• Build office space for 100-300 organizations.

• Recruit new members

• Continue to refine weekly meetings and how-to workshops (as currently)

Goal 2: Build Repeatable tools

• Virtual Volunteer Tour HUD and Kiosks

• Further Develop Nonprofit Starter-Kit “Office in a Box”

• Provide Resource Lists, How-tos, and Best practice Guides

• Organize at least 2 Campaigns with Nonprofit Commons Participants

• Campaigns should raise awareness of important issues

• Campaigns should provide means for immediate action– Example: Virtual Gitmo, – Bali conference, on climate

change in December, working with OneWorld.net and One Climate island

Goal 3: Organize Action & Awareness Campaigns

• Hold Virtual Events in-world

• Help Nonprofits produce events

• Hold Mixed Reality Events at RL conferences such as Netsquared or Council on Foundations

Goal 4: Host Virtual and Mixed Reality Events

• Spur innovation by providing honorariums to volunteer SL Developers

• Support special scripting and SL development

Goal 5: Foster a SL Developer Network for Nonprofits

Goal 6: Evaluate Impact of virtual community in NPC

• Mine existing data such as extensive meeting transcripts, usage data, interviews.

• Conduct discourse analysis to determine how people are communicating, what strategies work well in which situations

• Conduct Open ended interviews

• Conduct Random surveys• Sandy Anderson of ASU

conduct discourse analysis to document impact of virtual community in NPC

Contact

Susan Tenby

Senior Manager -Online Community Devlopment, TechSoup Network susan@techsoup.org

(415) 633-9333SL avatar: Glitteractica Cookie

http://www.nonprofitcommons.orghttp://npsl.wikispaces.com/