CrowdSmith Foundation is building the first community-based Maker Continuum in the country — a five-station path that runs from hand tools, through a real conversation with an AI, to advanced fabrication. It turns out credentialed workers for an economy that AI is already reshaping. The first building is headed for an Opportunity Zone in Tacoma, Washington — a neighborhood the federal government has targeted for new investment. It is backed by a financial model with three-year projections and dozens of identified grant sources.
Institutional investment.
Workforce Contracts
SmithFellow Core at $2,000 per seat. Specialization modules at $2,000 each. Each piece can be funded on its own. Government workforce agencies — like WorkForce Central, which runs job-training programs in Pierce County — pay for the training directly, and the participant pays nothing out of pocket. Contact us to discuss cohort contracts.
Corporate Partnerships
Sponsor a cohort, fund a station, or partner on AI literacy programming. CrowdSmith is eligible for corporate giving programs and workplace giving platforms including Benevity. Your workforce benefits from the credential. Our community benefits from the investment.
Foundation Grants
CrowdSmith’s Opportunity Zone location, its government-funded training, its AI programming, and its job-training mission qualify it for grants from federal, state, and private foundations. We welcome conversations with program officers.
SmithWorks Pipeline Funding
Here is what your donation does. Plenty of people have a genuinely good invention and no money to patent it — so they hand it to whoever will pay, and sign away a piece of it, or all of it. That is how most independent inventors lose the thing they made. SmithWorks is built the other way. We score each idea first — on its market, on whether it can actually be built, and on whether the founder is ready — and for the ones that prove out, donated money pays the patent attorney. The inventor keeps 100% ownership. No equity to us, no royalties, no strings. Everywhere else, getting help means giving up your idea. Here, it doesn’t. Your gift protects an inventor’s work and leaves it entirely theirs — and we show you exactly where it went.
Tool Donations
Estate tools, workshop liquidations, corporate surplus. Donated tools cost us nothing, so they do double duty — they stock the store that funds the operation, and they give Station One its training material. Tax-deductible. Pickup available in the Tacoma area.
CrowdSmith is built so that every dollar does more than one job. The tools are donated, so they cost us nothing. The mentors are retired tradespeople who volunteer. The training cohorts are paid for by agencies that hand out federal job-training money. And the first building is headed for an Opportunity Zone, where outside investors get federal tax breaks for helping fund the build-out. Your gift does not carry the model alone. It unlocks agency funding, training contracts, and private money far larger than the gift itself.
Direct support.
Individual donations fund the Foundation’s day-to-day operations, the work of building new programs, and the staff who tie the paid training to real results in the community.
CrowdSmith Foundation is a Wyoming 501(c)(3). EIN 41-3213329. All donations are tax-deductible.
Hands, not dollars.
Donate tools. Volunteer your trade skills. Mentor a cohort participant. Spread the word. If you are a retired tradesperson, a workforce professional, a grant writer, or someone who believes communities should have a place to build — get in touch.
“Some will write a check. Some will donate a drill. Both build the same building.”
CrowdSmith Foundation — Tacoma, Washington