The idea
To mark twenty years, we wanted to celebrate the cooperatives themselves. The #CoopAnniversaryAwards highlight cooperative enterprises across Europe, with the long-term aim of promoting cooperative entrepreneurship and showing what the model can achieve.
Setting up a fair process
I prepared the documents for the Award Committee, which brought together an academic, external partners, board members and a youth representative. I built a scoring sheet so that every eligible application was assessed on the same criteria, in the same way: the strength of cooperative governance and member participation, the significance and breadth of the impact, the contribution to the wider movement and the clarity of the evidence. Consistency mattered: with so many applicants, the committee needed a clear, shared method to compare them fairly.
Managing risk
I added a conflict of interest procedure to the process from the start. That proved its worth when a member raised concerns about possible conflicts: we could show exactly how they were handled, which protected both the committee and the credibility of the awards.
The result
Applications came from every corner of the movement: energy, housing, retail, textiles, building crafts, youth work, cultural initiatives, tech and agriculture. The committee shortlisted six finalists across two categories, from cooperatives with more than a million members to a twelve-person worker cooperative. The winners were celebrated at the 20th anniversary event in Brussels, and I brought their stories together in the Meet the finalists publication.
