Pixelanthropy: Charities tap into Second Life

A guide for nonprofit newbies
CompuMentor, which works to help charities use technology to reach their goals, agreed to sponsor Tenby as Second Life’s first-ever community manager for nonprofits. In May 2006, TechSoup Group in SL debuted to an immediate onslaught of interest. After several hundred people signed on as members in the group’s first few days, Tenby quickly realized she would need some sense of virtual “place” to help nonprofits and their eager volunteers find their way in the virtual world.

Unfortunately, virtual land within Second Life costs real U.S. dollars to acquire, as well as monthly payments to maintain it on Linden Lab’s servers. Tenby concluded that she would need an entire virtual island, or 16-acre “SIM,” to do the job right. To get that, she would need to identify SL’s first philanthropist.

Enter avatar Anshe Chung, the first Second Life entrepreneur to earn more than one million real U.S. dollars through her in-world business pursuits. Anshe, arguably as famous in Second Life as Bill Gates is in this one, gained her fortune through shrewd investment in virtual real estate development and design. Based near Beijing, Anshe Chung Studios acquires large blocks of SIMS from Linden Lab, zones them for various types of development, employs 80 artists and programmers to create virtual buildings and landscapes, then resells or leases the virtual space at a profit to Second Life residents eager to own a virtual home or operate a business from a virtual shop or office. In other words, Anshe Chung — whose real name is Ailin Graef — is the world’s first virtual land baron.

After hearing about TechSoup’s dilemma, she and her (real-world) husband Guntram Graef (known as Guni Greenstein in Second Life) happily stepped up to the philanthropy plate. “The idea of a nonprofit incubator in Second Life appealed to us,” she said in a rare in-world interview. The idea, she said, was to help nonprofit organizations network in Second Life and to help new arrivals from the nonprofit arena integrate into the virtual world. “In the long run, I hope the metaverse will help nonprofit organizations in developed and developing countries to collaborate more easily.”

Being Second Life’s wealthiest resident has restricted what Anshe can do, however. In December 2006, about a month after her company issued a news release noting that she had become the first online personality to net more than one million real-world dollars, the avatar was driven from a Second Life stage by electronic heckling, known in-world as “griefing.” And there are other challenges, including a capacity crunch (only 70 avatars seem to be able to gather at once in any one spot) and concerns over whether the constructs of the real world — such as taxes and copyright laws — should be applied virtually, as well. Add to that the fact that it's difficult to grow a progressive nonprofit without youth participation, yet teenagers are banned from Second Life's so-called "main grid." Instead, their virtual existence is corralled within a separate world called Teen Second Life, which has no gathering place comparable to the Nonprofit Commons.

Graef, though — as others — remain mostly unfazed by this new world’s growing pains. It’s more important in Second Life, says MacArthur Center director Joshua Fouts, to focus beyond the three vices commonly associated with virtual worlds — sex, gambling and commerce. “We are witness to a transformative moment in our society,” he says. “It’s new to all of us, experientially, this whole idea of an immersive alternate identity. We have the opportunity now to research something before it’s too late, before we’ve missed how this technology is transforming our culture.”

To be sure, Tenby and Graef are just getting started.

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