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A Second Life for nonprofits?
March 19th, 2007 by LynnBeaconfire’s constantly thinking about new technologies and techniques for outreach to our client’s advocates, donors, volunteers, staff, etc. Typically, though, we’re focussing on real-world consitutents. I must admit I haven’t given much thought, until today, about outreach to virtual constituents. An eye opening blog posting by Nedra Weinreich changed that. Nedra posts her interview with John Anderton, who is responsible for bringing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Second Life (the virtual world with nearly 5 million “residents”). What are other nonprofits doing in Second Life?
- American Cancer Society raised $40,000 with a virtual walk-a-thon in Second Life.
- Friends of the Urban Forest allows you to plant a virtual tree to help their program to plant real trees in San Francisio.
- Commonwealth Island in Second Life consists of a “rugged, coniferous island housing several nonprofits, including Greenpeace and ACLU”
- There’s an education campaign to help end the genocide in Darfur in “Camp Darfur”.
Second Life has a very helpful Non-Profits Wiki page with all sorts of resources that are just begging to be explored. (I can feel it sucking me in…) And TechSoup has an interesting interview with 3 nonprofits (Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York, Global Kids, and Amoration) who are all operating in Second Live. So much to learn, so little time…
March 20th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Our friend Ruby Sinreich led an anti-war demonstration in Second Life that coincided with the real-life D.C. march in January. Here are links to several of her blog posts about the experience (in chronological order):
http://lotusmedia.org/if-youre-not-going-to-dc
http://lotusmedia.org/avatars-against-the-war
http://lotusmedia.org/monday-we-march
http://lotusmedia.org/a-smashing-success
http://lotusmedia.org/post-protest-processing
And some of her subsequent posts about the real-life media reaction to the Second life protest:
http://lotusmedia.org/bbc-interview-slnn-story
http://lotusmedia.org/rl-media-covers-sl-politics
March 20th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Thanks for keeping up with the nonprofit world in Second Life! Our nonprofit organization, Amoration, came to Second Life in late 2005 to experiment with new media for education, activism and awareness, and now Second Life supports the rest of our aid and activism efforts! Two years ago I could not imagine working in Second Life and now we cannot imagine our work without it.
Since the Camp Darfur and ManorMeta projects in 2006 our nonprofit organization has built a team of Second Life developers who specialize in creating new spaces for NGOs, educational groups and other conscious media teams. We have produced over a dozen short videos including a recent piece on Darfur with Mia Farrow, the US Holocaust Museum and LCMedia: http://inkenzo.blip.tv/file/146779/
Organizations looking for help in Second Life should plan to attend a TechSoup Friday morning meeting to meet other nonprofit leaders, and any groups looking for professional Second Life development, video production and event/training services are welcome to contact our team.
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I find this topic intriguing, and it could be a powerful new way to reach potential and current advocates and constituents for an organization.
While its clear that educational messaging, awareness building and fund raising are all happening within Second Life, I wonder if there are any good examples of how these efforts have translated into actions in the real world (apart from donations, as virtual donations are actual donations…).
Has anyone been able to measure how Second Life advocacy has translated into real world actions (apart from donations)?
One reason I ask is that people often play these games to escape and be something they’re not in the real world. Be it a dragon slayer, wizard or the Macho-Man Randy Savage, escapism is a common theme.
So I wonder if messaging and awareness seen during such an escapism experience sinks in, stays with the user and ultimately translates into real world actions. Or if once the user leaves behind their fantasy persona, the desire to act fades.