![alinahh [NB-this lowercase usage is correct], a member of the latest cohort of the Uplift Makers Program from the Appalachian Creatives Collective, works on a woven textile at their home in Asheville, N.C. They [NB-the artist prefers they/them pronouns] keep a natural dye garden and forage in the mountains outside to create vibrant, earth-based colors for their yarns.](https://chronicle.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/70bfe59/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1280x853+0+1/resize/1680x1120!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchronicle-brightspot.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fe6%2Fcb%2Fa88f695743fcad46ec2a6ab93d42%2Fnews-lilly-beasleynest-0515-01.JPG)
In 2005, Rebecca van Bergen was working toward a master’s degree in social work at Washington University, with expectations of helping people one client at a time. But when she won a school innovation contest — with $24,000 in prize money — an entirely new path opened up.
That seed funding allowed van Bergen to set up Nest Inc., which helps women artisans in impoverished locations gain funding and training to sell their products on the global market. Today Nest operates in 125 countries and has expanded its programs to include U.S. women in poor rural and urban areas in 47 states.
Nest’s remarkable growth offers lessons to any social entrepreneur hoping to master the art of scaling a bold idea into something bigger. Van Bergen acknowledges that it took “a good five years before I felt like we were getting a foothold.” But she found allies at several crucial stages.
“It was the early days of social business, and people were really excited about the idea of doing business while doing good from a social work perspective,” she recalls. As Nest has grown, it has gained the backing of major retailers like Etsy and Tory Burch and funders such as the Oak and Moody’s foundations.
From an initial staff of two, including van Bergen, the organization now employs 33, has net assets of roughly $6 million, and from 2019 to 2025 has nearly doubled its revenue, to $7.2 million. Nest doesn’t take a cut of its artisans’ proceeds. Instead, its sources of funds include program service revenue, fundraising events, grants, and individual donations. Its spending is primarily directed at artisan training and financial support.
After the innovation contest at her alma mater, van Bergen said she got lucky in 2010 through a partnership with FEED Projects, fashion designer Lauren Bush’s company, which provides food to children worldwide. That relationship helped attract other major retail partners such as Etsy, Amazon, and West Elm. One brand or foundation partnership led to another, with funding partners recommending Nest to others in their network, van Bergen said. Her nonprofit also was able to ride a wave of philanthropic and international development interest in helping women in low-income countries start small, sustainable businesses.
Nest’s growth and longevity are due to more than just philanthropy or foreign policy trends. Over two decades, the organization has provided small grants and coaching to more than 345,000 entrepreneurs, mostly women, on topics such as financial management and product pricing. The organization has created a free-to-join network of about 3,000 handcraft businesses worldwide — including basket weaving, candle- and jewelry-making, and ceramics. And it connects artists to major retailers, now totaling 25 companies, that purchase and sell their goods. Nest doesn’t collect any revenue, because Nest been able to raise millions in grant funding from donors. The organization has received more than $10 million in grant funding since 2017, according to tax information from Cause IQ, which collects nonprofit data.
In recent years, Nest has expanded domestically, providing funds and training artists in all but three U.S. states. Among the artists is Stef Ratliff, who was born and raised in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky. Ratliff, 37, has been making art for more than a decade and since 2022 has been part of Nest’s U.S. program. She sells custom art and pottery through her KYARTRAT business and paints trophies for the Americana Music Association Honors and Awards. Songwriter and bandleader Grace Bowers performed with one of Ratliff’s custom-painted guitars at this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony alongside Coldplay’s Chris Martin. Working with musicians has fulfilled her “honky-tonk dreams,” Ratliff said.
But recognition from the music industry didn’t translate to a sustainable business. Ratliff said she didn’t fully understand how to manage finances and operate a successful online retail company until she started working with Nest three years ago as a community manager in Appalachia identifying local artists. Ratliff also has participated in several Nest training programs.
“I did a business consultation program with them [that] focused on marketing,” she said. “It taught me I can make the greatest pot or painting of all time, but if I don’t present them in the right light, no one is going to see them properly.”
Working with Nest and connecting to Etsy through a joint program called Uplift Makers was fundamental to setting up an Etsy shop for KYARTRAT , Ratliff said.
“We’re all reaching new customers through Etsy,” she said, referring to Nest’s eastern Kentucky group of 100 artisans.
“That’s huge for Appalachia and awesome,” Ratliff said. “I would never have thought to sell my pottery through Etsy because I felt like a lot of people don’t really care about southern stories and Appalachian stories. I didn’t think they really cared about history.”
Preserving the Culture of Craft
Helping creators tap into the global craft market is a personal mission for van Bergen. The St. Louis native grew up watching her grandmother and great-grandmother sew and quilt and came to value the time and effort that went into their projects. Later she realized that it was a common experience.
“I do have a history of craft, but so do most people,” she said.
“As the generations have gone on, we’re more removed from it,” she added. “But most people still have an aunt or grandmother who knits or crochets or made them clothes. It’s still pretty deeply embedded in our societies. It’s income-generating, and it also preserves cultures.”
Globally, handcrafts are a $906.8 billion market and a vital source of employment, particularly for women, according to the data service Research and Markets. Nest has helped artisans access that market by connecting them to brands and retailers like Amazon, GAP, L.L.Bean, Ralph Lauren, and Target. Nest’s funding comes from three buckets — roughly 25 to 30 percent from foundations, 35 to 40 percent from corporate philanthropy, and 16 percent from individual donors.
In 2021, Nest won an award worth $300,000 from the Elevate Prize Foundation to promote the rights of artisans worldwide. Moody’s Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Moody’s financial services, has granted Nest $400,000 since 2023 and is working with Nest to teach artisans how to prepare for and recover from climate disasters — an issue that Nest is prioritizing as more artisans report disruptions to their business operations due to extreme weather. Another funder, Oak Foundation, has provided Nest with three grants totaling more than $2 million since 2018 for Nest’s guild and fellowship programs.
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“It’s a bit of a sweet spot for us between our aspirations to support organizations that help people in communities thrive and the focus on helping people where they are,” said Douglas Griffiths, Oak Foundation’s president. “It’s not a Band-Aid approach. They’re really looking at structural issues.”
The fact that Nest takes an international approach, not just in the United States, was also attractive to the Oak Foundation, which was founded by British-born businessman Alan Parker and is based in Geneva, according to Griffiths.
“I think that just makes organizations so much stronger,” Griffiths said. “They have allies across the world, and they have networks of women in rural Kentucky and women in India that share information about some of the challenges. That’s an incredible gift.”
In 2021, Nest began transitioning from primarily working abroad to creating more programs for artisans in the United States. That year, the organization partnered with Etsy to launch the Uplift Makers Program to provide training and business development to six “heritage craft communities” across the country. Those communities include Gullah basket weavers from South Carolina, quilt makers from the Gee’s Bend area of Alabama’s rural Black Belt region, Afghan refugee craft business owners throughout the United States, Indigenous artisans from the United States and Canada, artisans from Oaxaca, Mexico, and craft makers from Appalachia.
Etsy provided an initial grant of $50,000 in 2021 to support the Gee’s Bend quilting community and has helped support more than 140 makers with grants and marketing advice nationwide through the Uplift Makers Program; sales have totaled more than $1 million, according to Etsy. Recently, the Mastercard Impact Fund gave Nest a $300,000 grant for its work with Appalachian artisans.
Empowerment Through Training
Nest has had to adapt its artisan training to the changing U.S. and global economy. For example, during the pandemic, Nest staff pushed for greater focus on financing and economic development, van Bergen said. These days the organization is keeping an eye on the Trump administration’s tariff policies, which could raise the price of art supplies and make it more expensive to import goods from other countries.
“Those are definitely going to impact our brand partners, and will impact us indirectly. It feels important to us that we are responsive to the world around us,” she said, “and recognize where we sit in it, what we can and can’t control, and how we need to evolve to stay successful.”
One of Nest’s initial goals was to help women in low-income countries gain economic power. Van Bergen chose not to go the route of microlending, which was popular among humanitarian groups in the early 2000s, when she started Nest, but has led to debt entrapment for some loan recipients.
Instead, Nest partnered with groups like Indego Africa, an organization founded in 2007 that provides business training to craft makers in Rwanda and Ghana. Indego Africa works with more than 700 artisans in those countries, and through the Nest partnership has helped connect Ghanaian women artisans to retailers like Tory Burch, which sells their hand-woven straw tote bags for close to $500.
“Those partnerships are super valuable, both to us and to our partners, because the size of those orders tends to be quite large. It could be anywhere from 300 items to 1,500 items,” said Sara Wohlers, Indego Africa’s director of marketing and communications. “That creates a lot of consistent work for our partners, and consistent income.”
As Nest shifts to more U.S.-focused work, it is helping women who face similar economic barriers. Among them is Cynthia Main, a Kentucky-based woodworker who has participated in Nest’s Makers Future Fund, a program that provides professional coaching with a $5,000 grant. Main owns Sunhouse Craft, where she sells handmade brooms, dustpans, and other goods. The store is based in Berea, Ky. — a college town with a population of more than 15,000 that is considered the folk arts and crafts capital of the state, largely due to student craft and artist-in-residency programs that promote careers in the arts. Yet Berea College is “its own thing,” Main said. Running an operation outside of the college is another.
“As is the case with many universities, the college is a bubble,” she said. “Meanwhile, I live in a community that has just been decimated. There is not a lot of money here.”
The stone quarry industry that helped establish Berea in the 19th century largely disappeared as cement became more commonly used for construction. Additional economic hits over the past two decades have included the loss of more than 200 jobs at a measurement and controls plant and the closure of a hydraulics plant that employed more than 100 people. Of Berea’s population of nearly 16,000, 19 percent live in poverty. The median household income is $56,484.
Main said Nest helped her overcome many financial and retail obstacles and build a broader client base for her products, which include handmade cutting boards and leather dustpans. Main and the Sunhouse team used the $5,000 grant from Nest’s Makers Future Fund to participate in their first wholesale show, Shoppe Object, in New York City.
“And, I mean, the reception for our business just vaulted us to the next level,” Main said.
Following that show, Sunhouse Craft more than doubled its annual profits, from $120,000 to more than $240,000 projected for this year, she said.
“I just think the work that Nest is doing is so important,” Main said. “I can’t stress enough how being in a rural place, there’s not a lot of help, or a lot of people who understand the uniqueness of a handmade business, and their advice has been so spot on.”
Reporting for this article was underwritten by a Lilly Endowment grant to enhance public understanding of philanthropy. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. See more about the Chronicle, the grant, how our foundation-supported journalism works, and our gift-acceptance policy.