Welcome to Nonprofit Commons

Information for Nonprofit Tenants

Welcome to the Nonprofit Commons and thank you for participating and joining in our new, virtual nonprofit community in Second Life. (teleport SLURL)  Below, you will find all the information you need to get your organization started and moved in to the Sim.

By lowering the barriers of access to Second Life, we hope we will encourage a large community of nonprofit organizations to learn, grow and collaborate in this virtual world. 

Made possible by a generous donation from Anshe Chung Studios, this totally free nonprofit community is a pilot project, and we are relying entirely on the help of volunteers to be sustainable.  If you want to ensure the success of this community of strictly nonprofit organizations, please do your part and volunteer your time here. 

Contact Ozma Malibu or Glitteractica Cookie in-world, if you are looking for a way to help out or if you have any questions.  

More information about what nonprofits are doing in-world can be found on the TechSoup-Second Life Google groupto communicate with others in the group.  When you post a message that is specifically about the Nonprofit Commons, please use NPC: in your subject line, to avoid unnecessarily clogging non-residents' inboxes.  (For example, "NPC: How many signs do we get outside our office?")

Please read all the updates; if you blog, ask to be a community blogger at http://secondlife.techsoup.org/

Building Out Your Office.

The designers at Anshe Chung Studios have provided each organization with an empty office, an easel in front of the office, and a sign.   To set up shop, be sure to follow the guidelines and instructions below.


Objects All objects should be kept inside your office, except for signs on the easel in front of your office. 
Objects placed outside your office will be returned to you.

Set Objects to Group  All objects must be set (not deeded) to the group "Nonprofit Commons."  The easiest way to do this is to make sure the NPC group is active when building or placing items on the ground.  They will automatically be set to the group. 



You can also set an object to group after it has been placed by right-clicking it, selecting edit from the pie menu, clicking the set group button and selecting "Nonprofit commons" from the pop up menu.

Any objects not set to the Nonprofit Commons group will be autoreturned in 1 minute.

Prim Allowance  We have a mutual agreement to keep the prims tenants bring into the sim to under 200 prims, as outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Tenants are limited to 200 prims per office space. The prim limit does NOT include the building. Too many prims on the sim affects all performance issues including lagging, scripts running, and rezzing, so it is crucial to keep to the prim limit to keep the NPC running smoothly.

Prim Counters make sure office spaces are not exceeding prim limit. They use a prim counting tool that counts all the prims in a space, and assigns them to their owners, making it easy to determine if a tentant has "too much stuff". While prim counting is not an exact science, prim counters will determine the approximate number of prims each office space is using. Offices that are far beyond limit will be issued a warning via IM to the owner of the group that owns the prims and will be given two weeks to bring the office under the limit. If the tenant does not respond to warnings, tenant managers reserve the right to return items at their discretion to the owner so the office meets prim count.

Scripts  As stated in the MOU, you are free to run scripts in your space to make your content interactive.  Heavy scripts may be disabled or returned at the discretion of the sim managers.  Greeter bots and other constantly active scripts should not be run, as they significantly contribute to lag -- and greeter bots are
really annoying.  Remember when everyone used to use the html tag <blink>? 

If you have questions about script usage, check the google group, the second life forums, or talk to one of the sim managers.

Music and Video on your parcel You can stream audio and video from the web into your parcel.  To change the stream, contact one of the sim managers.  Please remember that sim managers can change this field for you in the parcel tab but, as volunteers they may or may not have time and knowledge to help you understand how to use this function.

Your Sign You can update the easel outside of your office with your own content.  Notify a sim manager when you are ready to take control of your own content on the easel.  We will remove the current easel and provide you with a blank one to use.

Special Events
  For special events, campaigns, and notices, please contact a sim manager.  We have kiosks throughout the sim which will display messages from member organizations.  The amphitheater and stage are also available for your use.  We hope you will use any of the public areas for casual meetings.  Large organized meetings or events should be scheduled.   Contact a sim manager to do this.

For large events scheduled in advance, some festival signs/advertising can be arranged.

Who to contact for help

You have several options when you need help, depending on the situation. 

For questions about how things work in SL and how others are handling problems or challenges in-world, you can post on the TechSoup-SecondLife google group (linked http://groups.google.com/group/TechSoup-Second-Life) and the SecondLife forums http://forums.secondlife.com/.  There are also various in-world newbie organizations, such as The Shelter (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Isabel/50/229/81). 

There are also many groups, such as scripting, building, machinima and other groups in SL that you can join to learn more about how SL works.  You can find these by searching the "Groups" tab of the Search menu in-world.

Hitting F1 will also bring up the in-world help box.

For questions or problems with your office, parcel access, or your membership in the Nonprofit Commons group, contact one of the NPC Sim managers:  SaveGuimaras Wind, Ozma Malibu, Creech Antwerp or Frank Foley.

For severe lag or major technical problems with the sim, contact support.anshechung@gmail.com or a Sim manager.

For problems with griefers, contact Live Help by selecting Help>Contact Support in your Second Life client, as well as support.anshechung@gmail.com and sim managers.

For problems with SecondLife itself or your SecondLife client, hit F1 within Second Life to view the in-world documentation or contact Live Help by selecting Help>Contact Support in your Second Life client.  You can also email support@secondlife.com