Candlelight Vigil for ALS
Sunday, May 16
5 - 7 p.m. SLT
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Plush%20Nonprofit%20Commons/94/128/26

Please join The ALS Association in a candlelight vigil to mark ALS Awareness Month. This virtual vigil will follow the RL vigil in Washington DC, so that people who are not able to attend in DC can still be involved.

TechSoup and the Nonprofit Commons have released a new video created by machinimatographer Draxtor Despres. Filmed both in real life and Second Life, it shows how nonprofits collaborating in the virtual world can make a difference in the real world, one avatar at a time.

Nonprofits are finding that one of the major benefits of Second Life work is alliance building. I had the pleasure of attending Monday's panel on virtual world partnerships and collaborations.

Today I attended the Avatar on Duty session at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership office on Aloft Nonprofit Commons. 2020Vision (Ashima Saigal) moderated the session and she was joined by several other Johnson Center staff, along with a sizeable crowd of interested avatars. We were all there to discuss a key question for those involved with working with nonprofits in Second Life: How can nonprofits find long-term sustainability in Second Life and better translate into real-world action towards achieving their missions?

The session gave us opportunity to brainstorm and discuss this topic in an open forum. One of the first issues we discussed was what nonprofits hoped to gain by having a presence in Second Life. Many avatars saw Second Life as a way to engage a wider audience and bring awareness of their organization's work. Others mentioned the benefit of having a common meeting space and a way to network and collaborate with other nonprofits doing similar work, as well as connecting with organizations they might never have had the opportunity to meet. Jarhead Euler of Uptown Shelter gave the example of how his organization only heard about Community Voicemail through Second Life and now is meeting with several other organizations to discuss implementing this tool for their real-life work.