I’ve been working with nonprofits for 30 years and every organization or team I’ve ever worked with held the dreaded weekly staff or executive meeting in some fashion. Often they were early in the day, filled with the same repeated updates as all the meetings that went before it, and it was all I could do keep from melting into my coffee cup.
Not so with the weekly Nonprofit Commons in Second Life meeting. I’ve been attending this meeting every Friday morning at 8:30 am PDT since 2008 and every single one of these gatherings is engaging, enlightening, and a sincere demonstration of community & collaboration. Think I’m kidding?
Think about it … how can a gathering of nonprofit leaders from around the world be anything less than fantastic? It can’t! We share ideas, challenges, suggestions, and much more. Here’s a pic of our most recent meeting.
Examples of fields NPSL participants represent are healthcare, education, environmental, arts, and community development. BEST collaborates on digital and virtual projects with many of the people we have met here over the years. Every person I know inspires me with their enthusiasm, vision, and activities. So, what is Nonprofit Commons?
According to their website, Nonprofit Commons (https://nonprofitcommons.org) is a nonprofit archipelago in Second Life, consisting of four virtual locations (sims). Housing social benefit organizations from around the globe, the Nonprofit Commons is managed by a community of volunteers, under the leadership of TechSoup Global; https://www.techsoup.org.
What’s more, NPSL is about community. Their website says it best, “TechSoup’s Nonprofit Commons was designed to create a community of practice for nonprofits to explore, share best practices and learn within a virtual world, and to investigate the many ways in which nonprofits might utilize this unique virtual environment and other emerging technologies.”
What does this mean for our BEST community? It means that we learn about best practices in a variety of areas that strengthen our organization and, in turn, can positively support individuals with brain injury and their families. We learn from professionals so we can better educate the professionals we work with every day at BEST and with support groups. We contribute our experiences and the stories of those we serve in order to raise awareness and foster collaborations on issues of mutual concern.
To learn more about BEST in Second Life visit our SL page and follow our blog posts.
