How Nest turned a $24,000 idea into a global movement

In 2005, Rebecca van Bergen was a postgraduate pupil successful societal enactment astatine Washington University erstwhile she won $24,000 successful a schoolhouse innovation contest. That effect wealth sparked the instauration of Nest Inc., a nonprofit that empowers women artisans globally by providing training, funding, and marketplace access.

From its humble beginnings, Nest has grown into a unit successful the artisan economy. It present supports creators successful 125 countries and 47 U.S. states, helping women modulation from informal trade enactment to sustainable concern ownership. Nest’s web includes astir 3,000 handcraft businesses and has reached much than 345,000 entrepreneurs — chiefly women — with grants and coaching connected skills similar pricing and fiscal management.

“Most radical inactive person an aunt oregon grandma who knits oregon crochets oregon made them clothes,” van Bergen said. “It’s inactive beauteous profoundly embedded successful our societies. It’s income-generating, and it besides preserves cultures.”

Van Bergen’s archetypal interruption came successful 2010 erstwhile Nest partnered with FEED Projects, manner decorator Lauren Bush’s societal enterprise. That narration opened doors to collaborations with Amazon, Etsy, and West Elm. Over the years, Nest’s ngo has attracted enactment from funders similar the Oak and Moody’s foundations — arsenic good retailers similar Tory Burch and L.L.Bean, present totaling 25 companies, which acquisition and merchantability the artists’ goods.

From an archetypal squad of two, Nest has grown to 33 unit members, with nett assets of $6 cardinal and yearly gross of $7.2 cardinal successful 2025 — astir treble its 2019 revenue. It doesn’t instrumentality a chopped of artisan sales, relying alternatively connected grants, programme work revenue, fundraising events, and idiosyncratic donations. The enactment has received much than $10 cardinal successful assistance backing since 2017, according to taxation accusation from Cause IQ, which collects nonprofit data.

In caller years, Nest has expanded domestically, providing funds and grooming artists successful each but 3 U.S. states.

Among the artisans is Stef Ratliff, who was calved and raised successful the coalfields of eastbound Kentucky. She creates customized pottery and creation done her KYARTRAT business. Though she had painted trophies for the Americana Music Awards for much than a decennary — and created a customized guitar for Grace Bowers astatine this year’s Grammys — Ratliff struggled to tally a sustainable concern until joining Nest and moving arsenic a assemblage manager identifying Appalachian artists.

“I did a concern consultation programme with them (that) focused connected marketing,” she said. “It taught maine I tin marque the top cookware oregon coating of each time, but if I don’t contiguous them successful the close light, nary 1 is going to spot them properly.”

Working with Nest and connecting to Etsy done a associated programme called Uplift Makers was cardinal to mounting up an Etsy store for KYARTRAT, Ratliff said.

“We’re each reaching caller customers done Etsy,” she said, referring to Nest’s eastbound Kentucky radical of 100 artisans.

“That’s immense for Appalachia,” Ratliff said. “I would ne'er person thought to merchantability my pottery done Etsy due to the fact that I felt similar a batch of radical don’t truly attraction astir confederate stories and Appalachian stories. I didn’t deliberation they truly cared astir history.”

Nest’s ngo is rooted successful van Bergen’s ain acquisition watching her grandma and great-grandmother sew and quilt. The enactment focuses connected accepted crafts similar handbasket weaving, ceramics, and candle-making, which are some income-generating and culturally meaningful.

Globally, the handcraft marketplace is valued astatine $906.8 billion and a captious root of employment, particularly for women, according to the information work Research and Markets. Nest helps artisans pat into this marketplace by connecting them to brands similar GAP, Ralph Lauren, Target, and Amazon.

In 2021, Nest partnered with Etsy to motorboat the Uplift Makers Program to enactment six practice trade communities, including Gullah handbasket weavers from South Carolina, quilt makers from the Gee’s Bend country of Alabama’s agrarian Black Belt region, Afghan exile trade concern owners passim the United States, Indigenous artisans from the United States and Canada, artisans from Oaxaca, Mexico, and trade makers from Appalachia.

Etsy supported the Gee’s Bend quilters with a $50,000 assistance and has since helped implicit 140 U.S. artisans make much than $1 cardinal successful sales.

Recently, Nest received a $300,000 assistance from the Mastercard Impact Fund to bolster its enactment with Appalachian artisans.

Nest has adapted to economical shifts and argumentation changes implicit the years. During the pandemic, it prioritized fiscal literacy and concern development. Now, it’s monitoring planetary commercialized policies — similar tariffs — that could impact some artists and their retail partners.

Nest intentionally chose not to prosecute microlending, which was fashionable among improvement groups successful the aboriginal 2000s but sometimes near borrowers in debt. Instead, the enactment focuses connected partnerships with groups similar Indego Africa, which works with implicit 700 artisans successful Ghana and Rwanda. That concern has helped link Ghanaian craftswomen to retailers similar Tory Burch, which sells their hand-woven straw tote bags for adjacent to $500.

“Those partnerships are ace valuable, some to america and to our partners, due to the fact that the size of those orders tends to beryllium rather large. It could beryllium anyplace from 300 items to 1,500 items,” said Sara Wohlers, Indego Africa’s manager of selling and communications. “That creates a batch of accordant enactment for our partners, and accordant income.”

As Nest shifts to much U.S.-focused work, it is helping women who look akin economical barriers.

Among them is Cynthia Main, a Kentucky-based woodworker who has participated successful Nest’s Makers Future Fund, a programme that provides nonrecreational coaching with a $5,000 grant. Main owns Sunhouse Craft, wherever she sells handmade brooms, dustpans, and different goods. Despite Berea’s presumption arsenic Kentucky’s people arts capital, its system has suffered from concern closures and persistent poorness — astir 1 successful 5 residents lives beneath the poorness line.

Main said Nest helped her flooded galore fiscal and retail obstacles and physique a broader lawsuit basal for her products. She utilized her $5,000 assistance to be her archetypal wholesale commercialized amusement successful New York. That vulnerability helped treble her company’s yearly profits, from $120,000 to much than $240,000.

“I conscionable deliberation the enactment that Nest is doing is truthful important,” Main said. “I can’t accent capable however being successful a agrarian place, there’s not a batch of help, oregon a batch of radical who recognize the uniqueness of a handmade business, and their proposal has been truthful spot on.”

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Stephanie Beasley is simply a elder writer astatine the Chronicle of Philanthropy, wherever you tin work the full article. This nonfiction was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy arsenic portion of a concern to screen philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely liable for the content. For each of AP’s philanthropy coverage, sojourn https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.