What do you get when you have 65 NPO's, Live entertainment, dancing, and a whole bunch of people in the main square at NPC Aloft?
The answer..... an awesome Nonprofit Commons Awareness night!

SL singer Vienna James put on an amazing performance, helped promote our NPO's and toured the sim after her performance.

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.

Avatars representing survivors, caregivers, their families and the millions of passionate supporters engaged in fighting cancer worldwide will take center stage virtually, July 19-20, when the American Cancer Society conducts its fourth annual Relay For Life® event in the Second Life virtual world. The 2008 Relay in Second Life will celebrate the “heroes” who epitomize the Society’s global mission and who represent this summer’s virtual world event theme.

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!