Another organization finding success in Second Life—at least, enough success to repeat its fundraising events from last the last two years—is the American Cancer Society. I just received the press release announcing the third annual Virtual Relay for Life. The event will be held in-world on July 27-28. From the press release:

This year’s event, supported by the Society’s Futuring and Innovation Center, is expected to attract nearly 2,500 global participants. Volunteer organizers have already shattered their goal of raising $75,000 by raising nearly $90,000 (or $24 million Linden dollars, the official Second Life currency) to support cancer research and programs.

This is one of the marketing efforts you won’t read about in the articles chronicling the departure from Second Life of companies that haven’t made the effort to figure out where they went wrong.

The American Cancer Society gets its interactions in Second Life right. The Society actively engages residents in activities they can get behind. According to Randal Moss, manager of futuring and innovation-based strategies, “The Second Life community continues to show unwavering support, dedication and inexhaustible creativity as we draw close to another record breaking event.”

The Society has also opened a building, but not one that needs to be occupied to be valuable. It provides the same cancer information and services to people in the virtual world that people can obtain in the real world, and also includes meeting rooms for cancer education sessions and fundraising meetings. Coming up is a staffed link to the Society’s National Cancer Information Center that provides free cancer information 24/7.

Marketing in virtual worlds can work—when you engage the population with material they care about.