Kozeny Communitarian Award

Kozeny Communitarian Award
Geoph Kozeny

The Kozeny Communitarian Award honors the indomitable spirit of Geoph Kozeny, who devoted his adult life to creating community in the world. For the past decade, an exceptional communitarian or community group is chosen as the award recipient each year. They receive a plaque and are celebrated for a lifetime of achievement in the movement of intentional communities.

Nominations are now open for the 2022 Kozeny Communitarian Award. Learn how to nominate a candidate!

Award Recipients

Read About Geoph’s Life & Work
Diggers & Dreamers 2020 Award Recipient

About the Award Recipients & How to Nominate a Candidate

The Kozeny Communitarian Award celebrates the accomplishments of a person or organization in one or more of the following ways:

A. Networker: to a person or organization who did any of the following: an outstanding job of creating or strengthening relationships between two or more community-focused organizations; spearheaded joint projects among network organizations; has been noteworthy for a lifetime of bringing the inspiration and information of community living to the general population.

B. Media Relations: to a person or organization who has done an outstanding job of one or more of the following: accurately and fairly representing intentional communities to the press, especially in moments of tragedy or loss; generating media interest sufficient to get stories in print, profiling intentional communities and/or cooperative living; a lifetime achievement of writing and/or speaking passionately and ecumenically about community and cooperative living.

C. Good Neighbor: to a person or organization who has provided consistent and noteworthy assistance that was key to one or more communities dealing effectively with major challenges.

D. Community Builder: to a person or organization who has offered consistently high-quality assistance to fledgling intentional communities, measurably helping them succeed.

E. Creating Community in Place: to a person or organization who has helped existing neighborhoods, businesses, or nonprofit organizations develop a significantly greater sense of community and connection.

F. Cooperative Leadership: to a person who has modeled exemplary and inspirational leadership in a cooperative context. This may include the creation and development of a culture in which the leadership capacity of others flourished under this leader’s guidance; the demonstration of grace and the ability to hold the group together in times of crisis; the modeling of healthy ego management and the appropriate acceptance of responsibility when things didn’t work well; and foresight to prepare well for an orderly transition to others when it was time to step down.

G. Historian/Preservationist: to a person who has demonstrated over the course of a career that community stories and materials have been collected and recorded: that they have been captured accurately and with sensitivity; that they have been preserved for posterity; or that have been made available to the public openly and without prejudice.

GUIDELINES

o This Award is intended to honor a lifetime of achievement more than a single accomplishment.
o We intend to primarily honor people who helped create community in North America, though we are open to considering candidates whose contributions were mainly made on other continents.

o We expressly intend that the concept of “community” will be interpreted broadly and is not limited to intentional communities. It includes the concept of creating or enhancing a sense of community in any context, so long as it is genuine, lasting, and and is not accomplished through the promotion of us/them dynamics.

o The recipient’s contributions should significantly impact people beyond the members of their home community.

o The FIC initiated this award in 2009, two years after Geoph’s death. While the FIC aspires to select a recipient every year, this depends upon our having suitable candidates.

ELIGIBILITY: Nominees may not be current Fellowship of Intentional Community board members, paid staff, or volunteers serving on FIC committees. Anyone may submit nominations.

DEADLINE: To be considered for the 2022 Award, nominations must be received no later than April 1, 2021.

SELECTION PROCESS: After the deadline for nominations has closed, the FIC Award Committee (comprised of Oz Ragland, Deborah Altus, Betty Didcoct, and Laird Schaub) will review all submissions and prepare a short list of the most promising candidates for Board consideration. In a closed session, the FIC Board will then select the recipient in the spring or summer. After a winner is announced, the Award Committee will make arrangements for the award presentation, in collaboration with the recipient.

HOW TO MAKE A NOMINATION:
In order to be seriously considered, it is important that the nominator make a thorough case for why the candidate deserves the award. The Award Committee does not have the resources to conduct more than cursory research, so it is up to the nominator to do the bulk of the work to gather and organize the candidate’s credentials. Website links to additional information can be very helpful.

Submissions should include the following:

1. Contact information for the nominee, to the extent that it is known
2. Contact information for the nominator
3. Nominating letter thoroughly describing the nominee’s qualifications relative to the Award criteria A-G described above

Please direct all questions and nominations to: Laird Schaub laird@ic.org

Geoph Kozeny, The “Peripatetic Communitarian”
Read About Geoph’s Life & Work