Etsy and the Center for Craft Team Up for New Grantmaking Initiative

Etsy, which has an active program of help for individual artists and supported the North Carolina recovery efforts, noted the CfC’s new focus, and partnership talks began. “When the different arts communities came together, that’s where the magic was happening in recovery,” says Chelsea Mozen, Etsy’s Senior Director of Sustainability and Impact. “Then came the idea that if you can support those community organizations, you can go even further.”

The first five craft hubs, selected after Etsy-backed research, are Asheville and western North Carolina, the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, Berea and eastern Kentucky, greater Philadelphia, and Santa Fe and northern New Mexico. Mozen calls these regions “areas where craft is an integral part of the community. Our idea is that if we can support those hubs for craft, they’ll have reverberations across the nation.”

Within the regions, recipients are, in Moore’s words, “the organizations that allow artists to be educated and find mentors, that provide encouragement, working space, exhibitions.” These typically under-resourced nonprofits include higher-education institutions, regional craft centers and schools, makerspaces, and other entities. In this first round, each nonprofit will receive an unrestricted grant of $100,000. “We’ll also be working with grantees over the next year in a cohort model so that they can learn from one another, share examples and experience and ideas,” says Moore.