Nonprofits are piling into the virtual world of Second Life and similar online venues. What might seem to many as simply “role-playing games” or RPGs, Second Life and its ilk are becoming increasingly real life environments, with financial benefits and consequences, for players and nonprofits. A recent Wall Street Journal article detailed a run on the virtual banks in Second Life costing the players—or their avatars—real money. Nothing virtual about that.
We should have expected it, but the Congressional hearing on egregious fundraising practices among veterans organizations and the unusual “nonprofit entrepreneurs” running a couple of them reminded us of a slight problem of nonprofit sector amnesia. The Cohen Report has been monitoring this issue of abusing veterans through despicable charities for some time now.
Somehow, the Smithsonian’s leadership keeps giving and giving and giving (startlingly good examples of how to manage badly).
We reported in the last issue of CR about the plight of black farmers and the nonprofits that were fighting on their behalf to secure justice. Even though a positive court decision supported the farmers’ rights, the federal government’s lack of diligent follow-up on the case has attracted the attention of Senators Barack Obama and Chuck Grassley in the Senate, and Congressmen Bobby Scott and Steve Chabot, in writing and supporting a bill that would extend the opportunity for black farmers to file for restitution for discrimination suffered at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
As this piece is being written, the Dow has dropped from a high of more than 14,000 in July of 2007 to the current low of roughly 12,600 in anticipation of a recession. The nation’s subprime mortgage industry collapse, epitomized by the bargain basement acquisition of the nation’s largest subprime lender, Countrywide, by Bank of America, hasn’t helped.
