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.

As many of you know SL is about to turn 5 years old... Yup, a whole handful! This is a great opportunity to bring some attention to the work your nonprofit is doing in SL and RL.

As Linden Labs announced yesterday the party will be a two week event with the second week featuring exhibits from “business, education, health care and nonprofits”. Not only that but as they stated in their blog on Tuesday, June 3rd,

“We’ll close with a ceremony including a special guest speaker
with a very important announcement. “

The suspense is killing me!

Memorable things often happen without planning. Like on March 24 Ludwig van Beethoven died at the age of 56 in Vienna, Austria. Oh yeah, that was in 1827. Something else momentous happened this past Monday, March 24 ... and it was LIFE! It was life at NonProfit Commons Aloft. We had a party.