My own experience with a small international board of a small local youth organization in my home town Gyumri proves that it is possible to govern the organization using different social media tools. This type of governance makes us – the board members multifunctional and more active. It is a small consultative board of five professionals and each of us has a particular experience like human rights, organizational development, international volunteering, youth work and Armenian-Turkish dialogue. These are the main strategic directions of Youth Initiative Center NGO (YIC). Our main tools for communication are e-mails, Facebook and Skype. We usually have only two people at one place during our board meetings. We had a couple of Skype board meeting when all of us were in different places: US, Greece, Turkey, Poland and Armenia. Probably we would never have any face to face board meeting all five of us together. Being so far from each other we have regular board meetings and we are approving the joining of the new members to the organization, we are discussing weaknesses of the web-site and organization reports, we are approving new action and PR plans of the organization, we are delegating tasks to each of the board members (like promotion of YIC, fundraising of the projects, network development, connection with members of the organization, presentations for the staff and members of the organization on particular topics).
One of my tasks as a board member of YIC after our last meeting this Sunday is the promotion of one of the projects of YIC - “Youth Media Centre”. Right now YIC is hosting a Peace Corps volunteer Amanda Pascal and the project was developed in close cooperation with her. The project is already on the web site of Peace Corps and is waiting for contributions from citizens https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=305-070. We only need $898.60 to purchase a projector for organizing our educational activities more effectively. Here is our web site http://www.yic.info.am/projects.html .We also have a group on Facebook, look for "Youth Initiative Centre" Gyumri! Join us on Facebook and support our small project by promoting it via your networks! Let us try!
I like your subtle way of inducing a fundraising campaign for your NGO ... actually that's what social media is about: a place where you interact with people for a myriad of purposes... in this case you're using to make your voice heard on behalf of your organization... I think it is a good idea and I will even encourage you to impulse it more beginning with who are in the classroom. Probably we would not be able to raise the 900USD you need, but we could more or less raise something close to the 50USD or even more, and that will be a good start. Perhaps by the end of the semester (or the year) you may have some thing close to what you need.
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