International Spaceflight Museum

The International Spaceflight Museum [ISM] is leaving Spaceport Bravo behind in the SciLands move, and announced that it is for sale by auction.  “Kirra Ball donated the isle and 2 years rent/tier, but after that wonderful donation ran out in the spring of 2009, visitor and volunteer  staff donations were never   enough to pay for Spaceport Bravo.  It is with the greatest reluctance that the ISM Board of Directors voted this weekend to put the isle up for sale,” is my  comment as ISM Director and President.

The Board’s resolution: 

“Move the Board approve the sale of Bravo as quickly as possible in order to fund Alpha long enough to find a sponsoring organization and/or complete the 501c3 application process.”

Gus Plissken /SL name is handling the transaction, with an ISM BoDirectors  waiver: “Resolved, that Fred Fuchs and/or Firesabre Consulting be authorized to act as agent for the ISM Corporation in marketing and selling the sim, Spaceport Bravo, and should be indemnified against any claims of conflict of interest for the purposes of performing this service for the Board.”

-Paradox Olbers

ISM President

ISM Board of Directors

I reported at the weekly Wednesday 4 pm PDT/SLT meeting that we had a matching donor for the next month – if a person makes a donation, he’ll match it.  But I wasn’t telling the truth; the donor is me, and the staff can’t keep supporting Bravo by ourselves. 

Here’s our true situation:  Most of our donations come from the volunteer staff, a few large contributions (U$10 to U$50) each month and we can’t keep it up since we have to cover at least half of Spaceport Alpha’s rent/tier too.  So I’ll match all public [not staff] contributions up to one month’s rent for Bravo – U$195 – made before Sept 20th.  I apologize for trying to drum up contributions by using this tactic and then redefining the offer.

I’ve changed my original offer that didn’t put a cap on the matching because we’ve just got some outstanding publicity in RL  and possibly a big staffer donation too, which could lead to public contributions that would exceed my ability to match.  The new publicity that gave me renewed hope for a large increase?

*On Thursday, Hamlet Au’s New World Notes, one of the largest five sources of SL news, gave us a great post asking people to help.  [Clarification - my original offer was to cover this month's rent/tier, NOT indefinitely until the 501c3 came through.]  http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/08/save-spaceport-bravo.html 

*Earlier today (Friday), Rik Riel also gave us a supportive post as well at Betterverse.org.  http://www.betterverse.org/2009/08/the-second-life-spaceflight-museum-needs-help.html

Thanks to you both for getting our situation out to many avatars who have never heard of the International Spaceflight Museum before!

-Paradox Olbers, President of ISM and head of operations

Of course, but in particular the US Internal Revenue Service have sent us a letter asking for more information regarding our application for tax-exempt status. This is excellent news, since it means we are getting close to approval of that long-awaited state. While the ISM Corporation has been a non-profit corporation in the eyes of the State of Kansas, where we are incorporated, since 2006, that is not the same as having recognition from the IRS.

So, please help us keep the doors open as we clear this final hurdle! The bills are due again next week, and we are far from being able to pay our monthly debt to Linden Lab. You can follow our progress in that effort on our online balance sheet here, and you can help by visiting our Donation page here.

We’re almost there!

The application for federal tax-exempt status — non-profit, or 501(c)(3) — has been filed with the US Internal Revenue Service on behalf of the ISM Corporation. This corporation is the Real Life organization that manages the financial affairs of the International Spaceflight Museum. Now we wait to hear from them.

Assuming the application is approved, we can then petition Linden Lab to lower our “land use fees” (server costs) to the level charged other non-profit organizations, which would cut our costs drastically. Since buying our first island we have paid full retail for our space-space, with current costs running nearly US$400 per month. But in the meanwhile, again assuming the application is approved, anyone who has made a financial donation to the museum and who pays US income taxes can include those donations in their itemized charitable deductions back to the corporation’s founding in October 2006. This is possible because we submitted the application (just barely) within twenty-seven months of incorporating.

In the meantime, thank you for your past support, and please don’t stop! We need your contributions to keep the museum running, so visit our donation page, or just click this button to send a gift to the ISM now.

This past month we had a bit of a scare, with some annual corporate expenses for our nonprofit as well as the new responsibility of paying land use fees for Spaceport Bravo. Our members and friends came through for us at the last minute, for which we thank them all profusely! But we would like to avoid the need for emergency fundraising. To that end, we now have several ways for friends of the ISM to provide support.

Please see our Donate page, or go to the Sponsorship page, or directly to our Donation Subscription page for more information on ways to send us donations. Of course, if you are in Second Life and want to donate Linden Dollars, you can use any of the tip jars on Spaceports Alpha or Bravo. The ones that look like pickle jars with a tiny rocket in them will launch a rocket when you make a donation — the larger the amount, the bigger the rocket!

ISM Tipjars

Whatever way you choose to help out, we thank you very much! We couldn’t do it without you, and that’s the literal truth. Thanks!

I arrived inworld November 4th, 2006, immediately pulling up my Map with a control-M [Windoze], and typing in “Spaceport Alpha.” I like to say “I never left.” I did, though, and found that over half of the two dozen sims on my to visit list that I’d made from reading months of items from New World Notes and Metaverse Messenger were gone! This was my first abrupt exposure to the volatility and impermanance of Second Life.

In contrast, ISM was formed in September 2005, opened Spaceport Alpha in July 2006, and Spaceport Bravo in 2007 – and is still here. We appreciate the support of all of our visitors, donors, builder/scripters, and staffers, past and present. There’s a lot more work to do to put ISM on a self-sustaining basis, beginning with replacing our generous donor Kirra Ball’s more than a year’s payments for Spaceport Bravo (plus buying it in the first place).  I’m confident that all of us and newcomers together can do this!

You can make a one-time Donation [we are looking into Paypal monthly subscriptions - 200 hundred humans (or others - ISM doesn't discriminate) paying less than one Euro or US dollar a month would pay Spaceport Bravo's way completely], buy a present for a loved one at our virtual and real giftshops, and/or help us get a sponsorship from your company.

Thank you.

The past few weeks have seen quite a bit of activity in the background, and soon some of it will become obvious on this site as well.

Paradox Olbers (SL name) has taken on the day-to-day operational leadership of the ISM planning group in Second Life, and was elected to the ISM Corporation’s board of directors.

This website will have a new look soon, as well as a new “landing page”, so you won’t be immediately on this blog page in future, but will need to either navigate here or use a longer URL. If you’d like a preview or want to watch the work in progress, go here. You can leave comments about the new page design on this post if you like.

The new exhibit info wiki is acquiring translations into a number of languages, thanks to friends of Becka, who has been contributing articles to this blog as well. We will be adding more research results to that wiki as time goes on, too.

There is more in the works, but we’ll wait till the other things are closer to reality before mentioning them here. Congratulations (and thanks) to Paradox, and to all the planning group members who are working hard to help make the best museum in Second Life become even better!