Interesting story here: the International Spaceflight Museum is auctioning the sponsorship of its new exhibits on eBay.

From the press release:

The International Spaceflight Museum (ISM), a non-profit, volunteer-run educational facility in the virtual realm of Second Life (SL), takes its exhibit sponsorship auctions to eBay to attract the attention of more real-world bidders.

The sponsorships for full-scale models of two lunar vehicles are up for auction — the “Apollo Lunar Module” (built by Lora Chadbourne, SL
name) and the unflown Russian “Lunniy Korabl” (built by Helori Pascal, SL name). The auctions will run from October 1 to October 21, and sponsorships will begin on November 1, 2007 and end on January 31, 2008.

Winning sponsors will have their names prominently displayed on the exhibit’s display signage. They may also elect to have a logo displayed for an additional fee.

Kat Lemieux (SL name, Katherine W. Prawl in real life) is co-founder of the museum and CEO of the nonprofit ISM Corporation. She said, “The exhibit sponsorship auctions allow us to give individuals as well as organizations the opportunity to support the museum, and get some recognition for their contributions at the same time. We are very interested in seeing whether eBay auctions are a viable approach, since this might permit us to reach a much larger donor pool than only holding silent auctions within Second Life.”

Will keep an eye on this and report back with links when the auctions begin.

I do think it’s interesting, and I’m curious to see if there will be any interest from people not already well versed in Second Life. Sponsorship is something we’ve been thinking about recently with regards the events we’re holding, and we thought that it might be a good opportunity for people who are interested in Second Life, but don’t really have any ideas beyond branding. I’m not sure what the monthly traffic is to the ISM, but I’m sure it must be thousands, so why wouldn’t RL companies want to sponsor that just like anything else?