Reorganizing the Kentucky Colonels International Commission and Foundation

A Digital Presence for Kentucky's Goodwill Ambassadors

Kentucky Colonels International

Having a good social media presence has become an essential part of an organizational repertoire in today's society. Social networking has proven to be very big business for some companies who provide users with tools to communicate online so they can better organize and develop their programs and promote their purposes.

In 1998 we presented the first website for Kentucky Colonels to present and network themselves, however it was short lived because a larger and more powerful organization decided to challenge our development in 2001. In 2007 we began our comeback on Facebook, but as a volunteer organization and social formation, since then we never had as much time or money to invest as was necessary to further develop our formation. (More about this will be presented in our next articles.)

New Website and Blog

We are introducing a new website and blog under the domain name [kycolonels.international] that is based on providing member support. The new endeavor will help to recover the work we began in 1998 and extend our presence as Kentucky's official goodwill ambassadors.

The new website and blog will be driven by our own Honorary Commission of Kentucky colonels who we are calling our officers. Together they will be responsible for driving our formation as a legal "membership organization" under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and the Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS).

Some of the immediate goals will be to provide our formal members with online credentials, an email address handler using their own personal names with our website domain name, access to Google Suite using IDaaS, as well as biographical pages for members who participate distinguishing their deeds and honorable commission as a Kentucky colonel. Other membership benefits will also be provided as they are developed.

We are off to a great start with more than several thousand pages of data that can be entered and used in our website. Our purposes however are primarily oriented towards providing membership services and developing a member organization, so we have only included the most formal and official information in our immediate presentation. The website is really off to a great start, all members are encouraged to support its development!

Our goal is to present the organization with the utmost transparency, sincerity, dignity and formality to elevate the honorable title accompanied by the official commission to the level of integrity and respect they deserve. In the future we will consider a section of the website to be focused some of the informal humor that has developed surrounding the honorable title which many say has beguiled it making it a tongue-in-cheek award for many who receive it.

Reorganization and Reformation

We began our development in 1998 as the only organization (at the time) established as a genuine membership organization formed specifically to develop mutual and fraternal social benefits for our members. Since we began and conceded defeat in 2001 to the HOKC (the charity) other organizations that have been set-up for similar purposes which have surpassed our development forming membership associations under legal charters in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

To propel our noble effort we need member support from the Facebook groups we have helped to develop since 2007 and from the public through our Facebook fanpage which now has a link for supporters to make discretionary donations. We also have a page on our new website where members and supporters can donate to give our formation the independence it deserves.Supporters and members can also make a donation here using PayPal or a credit card. (Link suspended by court order)

Supporting our Development

While we need donations to make our formation better and more resilient, we also need to build on what we already have begun in the social media to strengthen our organization. Those who are already members and page followers are encouraged to network our program to other Kentucky colonels that they know and encourage them to join our association through our groups and support our foundation online to follow and share our Facebook page and Twitter page.

On Facebook you will find two social groups, the private groups are open only to Kentucky colonels who have already received commissions.

• Kentucky Colonels International (Facebook Group established 2006)
• Kentucky Colonels on Facebook (Facebook Group established 2009)

For the public, members and non-members we have our website, blog, a Facebook page and Twitter which was recently recovered. We have not begun to use Twitter but plan to soon interactively to promote the website and the accomplishments of our members.

• Kentucky Colonels International Commission and Foundation (Website)
• Kentucky Colonels International Blog (Google News and Blogger)
• Kentucky Colonels International (Facebook Page established 2009)
• Kentucky Colonels International (Twitter Feed established 2009)

We have taken all of the initial steps required in law to begin the reformation process with Globcal International which also supports the Goodwill Ambassador Foundation as Kentucky Colonels International's founding sponsor, our primary contact in Kentucky is the Ecology Crossroads Cooperative Foundation originally established in 1994.

Our Organizational Commission

Currently we have nine (9) commissioners that are recognized as our initial officers. During our formation process we are accepting proposals for additional commissioners, chancellors which represent country chapters, ambassadors in charge of activity and event committees, as well as consular officers that work with ambassadors.

The commissioning officers that have already been selected are people with experience in leadership as goodwill ambassadors or leaders in their own communities, they have committed or donated $1,000 or more to our organization or charitable causes to hold their position as officers in recent years. They include colonels Nicholas Wright, Karen Cantrell, Luis Cruz Diaz, Maria Veneke Ylikomi, Jon Meier, Joshua Wilkes, and David Wright who serves as the Secretariat of our international membership organization.

Those who are interested in serving as an officer or being recognized as commissioners can contact us directly by email elaborating their qualifications by providing their Facebook profile, writing something about how they became colonels, tell us how they can contribute to the formation or would like to become officers, and by providing some basic biographical information. All those who are selected as commissioners will be asked to serve for a minimum of five years.