Fellowship for Intentional Community

The Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) nurtures connections and cooperation among communitarians and their friends. It provides publications, referrals, support services, and sharing opportunities for a wide range of intentional communities, cohousing groups, ecovillages, community networks, support organizations, and people seeking a home in community.[1][2] The FIC is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization in the United States. [3]

Activities

The FIC publishes Communities magazine, the Communities Directory,[1] Journal of Cooperative Living, FIC Newsletter and the Intentional Communities web site.[4] It also sponsors and presents periodic Community gatherings, including annual gatherings at Twin Oaks and Art of Community events in various locations around the US.[4]

FIC vision and mission statement

May 15, 1998 (assembled by the Vision Committee)[5]

Vision

We envision a world where community is available, understood, appreciated and supported for all people who desire it and where the skills, structures and wisdom of community are recognized as basic building blocks of a just and sustainable culture.

Mission

  1. Openly provide accurate and comprehensive information about living in intentional communities.
  2. Promote dialogue, understanding, and cooperation between existing communities and related organizations.
  3. Make the realities, options, and lessons of intentional communities readily accessible to the wider culture.
  4. Provide moral, financial, and technical support to forming and established communities in need.

Purposes

The FIC declare its main purposes as:[6]

  • To embrace the diversity that exists among communities and to facilitate increased interaction between communitarians and the wider culture;
  • To build cooperative spirit within and among communities through shared celebrations, joint ventures, and activities that build awareness of our common humanity;
  • To facilitate exchange of information, skills, and economic support among individuals, existing intentional communities, cooperative groups, and newly forming communities;
  • To serve as a reference source for those seeking intentional communities, conferences, and other community building experiences and practices appropriate to their needs;
  • To support education, research, archives, and publishing about contemporary and historic intentional communities;
  • To demonstrate practical applications of communities, cooperatives, and their products and services – through seminars, catalogs, demonstration projects, gatherings, and direct sales;
  • To increase global awareness that intentional communities are pioneers in sustainable living, personal and community transformation, and peaceful social evolution.

Organizational history

The history of FIC began in 1937 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which still has one of the largest concentration of intentional communities per capita.[2] The group/network of 19 student-run houses in Ann Arbor had formed The International Cooperative Council (ICC), a forerunner of FIC.[2]

The Fellowship for Intentional Communities was founded as Inter-Community Exchange in 1940 by Arthur E. Morgan (1878–1976) for communication and exchange of goods between intentional communities.[7] During World War II, some of these communities served as refuge for pacifists.[7]


Alongside the aforementioned co-sponsorship with Twin Oaks Community, Virginia, some of the members of the "Inter-Community Exchange" were Hidden Springs in New Jersey; Tangy Homesteads in Philadelphia; Tuolumne Co-operative Farms near Modesto, California; Skyview Acres at Pomona, New York; Parisfield near Brighton, Michigan; Kingwood in New Jersey; Quest near Royal Ark, Michigan; Canterbury outside Concord, New Hampshire; May Valley near Seattle; The Valley near Yellow Springs, Ohio; St. Francis Acres/Glen Gardener in New Jersey; Koinonia Partners near Americus, Georgia; and the Bruderhof (Society of Brothers).[7]

In 1952, FIC created the Homer Morris Loan Fund — which has subsequently provided over $200,000 in small loans to intentional community businesses and associated enterprises. When the FIC's activities decreased in the 1960s, the loan fund continued separately as the non-profit Community Educational Service Council, Inc. (CESCI), and the FIC held annual gatherings of communitarians in conjunction with CESCI's board meetings.

In 1954, FIC began holding annual conferences at Yellow Springs, Ohio and Pendle Hill, Pennsylvania.[8]

Then "Inter-Community Exchange" gradually weakened and was dissolved in 1961; a major reason for this was withdrawal of the Bruderhof (largest and most prosperous member).[7]

It was revived under the its current name "Fellowship for Intentional Community"[7] and incorporated as non-profit organization[9] in 1986.

In the mid 1980s, inspired by the earlier FIC and other regional community networks, a number of community activists sensed that the time was ripe to organize a continental communities network. The FIC is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable educational organization (meaning that all donations are fully tax-deductible). Participation has been expanded to include most of North America — the Fellowship now includes a wide range of individuals, well over a hundred intentional communities, and various support organizations.

Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sreenivasan 2008, p. 144.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Gurvis 2006, p. 107.
  3. ↑ 501(c)(3) status
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "FIC Projects and Services". The Fellowship for Intentional Communities. Retrieved 2011-09-12.
  5. ↑ "FIC Vision & Mission Statement". The RNC Packet. The Fellowship for Intentional Communities. Retrieved 2011-09-12.
  6. ↑ "The Fellowship for Intentional Community's Non-profit Purposes". The Fellowship for Intentional Communities. Retrieved 2011-09-12.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Morris 2009, p. 101.
  8. ↑ Veysey 1978, p. 39.
  9. ↑ Hahnel 2005, p. 366.

See also

References

External links