Nonprofits in Virtual Worlds

On Monday, April 28th, 2008, at 11:00AM SLT, Robert Bloomfield and Metanomics hosted Susan Tenby, Senior Manager of the nonprofit TechSoup, and American Cancer Society's Randal Moss for a discussion of the challenges and opportunities facing nonprofit organizations in virtual worlds.

Listen or download the audio. (MP3)
Read the transcript.
Read the backchat & local chat (PART 1).
Read the backchat & local chat (PART 2).
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On April 1, Susan Tenby testified in a hearing on "Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium" before the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. After her testimony to the US Congress, Tenby was the object of the Daily Show's Jon Stewart, who said "Damn you Susan Tenby" because she took the SL name he wanted, Glitteractica Cookie. And Tenby fired back, highlighting her work with the Nonprofit Commons in Second Life.

Metanomics Host Rob Bloomfield answered with his own challenge at Metanomics this week, inviting the audience to come dressed as bears, and saying "I think we might have an easier time getting Stephen Colbert (into Second Life) than Jon Stewart. He's pretty much Jon Stewart's little brother, and it's so easy to get little brothers to do things. Basically, you just dare them. Show Mr. Colbert those bears. Big ones. Little ones. Pandas. Grizzlies. You name it. We have it right here, right now, on Muse isle, and it'll be here whenever you're ready."

The Nonprofit Commons is a two sim project with 70 resident nonprofit organizations which Tenby describes as "the Plush Nonprofit Commons, which was donated by Anche Chung studios" and is a "kind of academic university setting", and "our newest sim, which we're going to ...launch formally at the NetSquared conference at the end of May with a mixed reality event and a lot of splash. And that one is a lot more freeform."

"We have open town hall meetings every Friday from 8:30 to 10:00 A.M. Randy's been a guest a couple times. We have speakers. We have a community meeting, and you can kind of just see. If you have questions about what nonprofits are doing in-world, that's the best way to find out. It's at ... Nonprofit Commons One on Plush Island, 8:30 A.M. SLT, on Friday morning."

Randal Moss is the Director of the Futuring and Innovation Center at the American Cancer Society. ACS hardly needs an introduction as one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the world with nearly a billion dollars in support from the public. Randal has been instrumental in bringing to Second Life one of ACS's more public fund raising devices, Relay for Life, which raised nearly $115,000 within Second Life for the American Cancer Society in 2007.

The Futuring and Innovation community at ACS is about 6 years old, and helps ACS take advantage of future trends, which, according to Moss, "can be anything from process innovations, all the way up to large breakthrough innovation and ideas. So one of the concepts that came out of this was, "Hey, should we be participating in virtual communities?" And we provided a seed fund grant, almost like an internal venture capital, and we allowed one of our staff members to really investigate this in conjunction with a volunteer. And now we have the Relay for Life in Second Life , which has been a tremendous success in building community development."

Moss has recently blogged about the concept of the One Man Nonprofit. "The idea's really interesting. Every person wants to feel and do something important to them to make the world a better place, and I think that this series of posts on Community Mobilization took a little bit of a critical look at that. What happens when you take a collective whole effort and you break it up into small pieces, do you dilute the ability to act on mission? Do you increase exposure for a cause? Do you gain in economies of scale, or do you lose in economies of scale?"

"And, from a management perspective, and a management lens, it becomes a real challenge to a large organization like any of the other national health or national activism organizations. How do we let people organize events and organize activities that they personally are passionate about, that will help to move the greater mission forward most effectively? And I think that's the real big looming question that exists, in terms of the one man nonprofit. "

"Come over to the American Cancer Society's Island," Moss continued. "Please participate in Relay For Life, in terms of coming to team events. Look around in the announcements. There's all sorts of amazing things not limited to but including snail races. There's a lot of fun, and it always is for a good cause."

Both Moss and Tenby also attended the Metanomics Rewind event on Tuesday, April 29, at 3 PM, to answer more questins and interact with participants during the show's rebroadcast held each week to provide a fun discussion forum for those who could not attend the live show. A 30 minute SLCN lead-in cartoon preceded the event.

What is your common good concern in real life and as an avatar? Your idea? Your mission as an individual? If you didn't catch the live show, and want to know more relating to the broad array of issues which encompass the nonprofit environment in Second Life and other virtual worlds, take the time to see or download the video at the top of this page.