Nonprofit that aids Native Americans seeking to buy business

FORT COLLINS — A Fort Collins-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that promotes alternative housing and energy, nutrition and education for Native American women and their families is seeking donations to help it launch a crowdfunding effort to buy a business in southern Colorado whose sales would benefit the organization’s work.

Tiyospaye Winyan Maka — its name means “extended family of women of the earth” —  wants to start a crowdfunding campaign to raise about $60,000 to purchase the business that makes beaded hats and hatbands, said Christinia Eala, TWM’s director, but first it needs donations of $8,000 to $9,000 for a videographer and video editor to do a presentation on the crowdfunding page, travel expenses, and an accountant specializing in nonprofit businesses.

The hatband business has been run by sole proprietor Susie Cotcher in the tiny, unincorporated high-desert town of Gardner, in Huerfano County, near Walsenburg. The business provides jobs for several of the town’s women, who can work from home, and the beaded bands are sold directly to high-end retail stores. Facing the onset of Parkinson’s disease, Eala said, Cotcher “feels it won’t be long until she can no longer give the business the attention she feels that it needs. She said she knew that she wanted it to be incorporated into the Native American community somehow,” Eala said. “When we met, she asked if I would be interested in buying the business.”

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If TWM can buy the business, Eala said, its proceeds can keep the master beaders and porcupine-quill workers employed while also supporting the nonprofit’s work with Lakota tribes living on reservations such as Pine Ridge in South Dakota.

“If grants don’t come in and fundraising is poor, we can still have some income coming in” from the business, Eala said. “She still makes about a $17,000 profit annually.”

TWM also is formalizing a partnership with Engineers Without Borders at Colorado State University, Eala said, “so they can help us fundraise and design and build housing on the reservation.”

Individuals or companies wishing to help can contact Eala at 970-290-0353. Information about TWM is online.