Tacoma’s Machine-Building Family · Giving Where It Was Built
Globe Machine Manufacturing has been building machines on Tacoma’s tide-flats since 1917. Five generations. One hundred and seven years. The foundation Calvin and Joanne Bamford built from that legacy gives in one place: Tacoma. It gives for one purpose: to strengthen the community that sustained the family business through two world wars, a pandemic, and every economic cycle in between.
The building on Portland Avenue is a machine. Five stations arranged in sequence. Raw capability enters at one end. A credentialed, employed human being exits at the other. The Bamford Foundation knows what manufacturing infrastructure looks like. It has been funding the community that builds it—and is built by it—for thirty-five years.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
The Bamford Foundation holds position #84 because its geographic focus, grantmaking priorities, and manufacturing heritage align precisely with the CrowdSmith mission—but as a small family foundation with grants capped at $15,000, the financial scale limits its proximity rank relative to larger institutional funders. The alignment is near-total. The scale is modest. The ranking reflects both.
1990, by Calvin D. Bamford Jr. and Joanne Bamford, Tacoma, Washington.
Calvin D. Bamford Jr. (b. 1944). Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Long-time President and Chairman of Globe Machine Manufacturing Company. Managed and grew the family business from 1966 until its sale to Westward Partners circa 2024. Third-generation leader of a company founded by his grandfather Jesse Bamford in 1917.
Joanne Bamford. Moved to Tacoma in 1967. Led boards and charitable organizations in education, human services, and the arts. Community leader in Pierce County for more than five decades.
Holly Bamford Hunt (daughter, active board member), Drew Bamford, Kathryn Bamford. Metro Parks Tacoma presented the Parks Champion Award to Joanne and Holly in January 2020.
PO Box 1135, Tacoma, WA 98401 · EIN 91-1504193 · 253-383-8584
Tacoma and Pierce County, South Puget Sound. Exclusively.
$1,000–$15,000 (2025). Quarterly cycles. Two-part process: Letter of Inquiry, then Application. Operational and program grants preferred over capital requests.
Basic Needs (food, health care, shelter, financial stability) · Early Learning and Parent Support · Expanded Learning Opportunities · Access to Higher Education and Job Training.
Globe Machine Manufacturing Company was founded in 1917 by Jesse Bamford and operated from a 140,000-square-foot facility on D Street along the Foss Waterway in Tacoma. The company did not make products. It made the machines that make products—custom factory solutions for the building products, pulp and paper, and advanced composites industries. Its capabilities included factory automation, robotics, manufacturing integration, and precision machining.
Globe’s patented RapidClave™ technology reduced the curing time for carbon-fiber composite parts from ninety minutes to as few as six—a process first used on Corvette hoods and roofs. The company built I-joist assembly machines capable of producing more than 700 linear feet per minute, shipped worldwide in containers and reassembled on-site. One such machine was tested in Tacoma, disassembled, shipped in 23 containers to Lithuania, and reassembled for production.
Calvin Bamford Jr. succeeded his father, Cal Sr., who succeeded Jesse. Calvin managed and grew the company from 1966 through its sale to Westward Partners, a Seattle-based financial investor, completing a transition after more than a century of family ownership. The Bamford family’s decision to establish the foundation while still operating Globe ensured that the community investment would outlast the company’s family tenure.
The Bamford Foundation’s four priority giving areas reflect what the family learned from a century of manufacturing in Tacoma: that the workforce pipeline starts before the factory floor. Basic needs must be met before a person can learn. Early learning shapes whether a child develops the curiosity and discipline to pursue skilled work. Expanded learning opportunities fill the gap between school and career. And access to higher education and job training is the final mile—the station where capability becomes employment.
In June 2025, the foundation awarded a $15,000 grant to the Making A Difference Foundation for its Rising Higher Workforce Training and Reintegration Program—hands-on job training for individuals facing barriers to employment, including those with corrections system involvement. The grant covered program costs, safety equipment, and direct training. This is the kind of investment the Bamford Foundation makes: specific, local, and aimed at the point where a person’s trajectory changes.
The foundation distributed 142 awards in 2022 and adjusted to a more limited budget in subsequent years, focusing on smaller grants with higher leverage. Its grantmaking criteria emphasize evidence-based programs, innovation, equity, and collaboration with other Pierce County organizations.
| Dimension | Bamford Foundation | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Geography | Tacoma and Pierce County exclusively | Portland Avenue corridor, Census Tract 62400, Tacoma |
| Manufacturing | Globe Machine Mfg, Foss Waterway, 1917–present | Five-station Maker Continuum, hand tools through robotics |
| Workforce | “Access to Higher Education and Job Training” priority | Five credential tracks through funded WIOA cohorts |
| Grant Fit | $1K–$15K operational and program grants | Program-ready from Day One; earned revenue model reduces dependence |
| Equity | Programs promoting equity, diversity, access, inclusion | Station Zero for foster youth; barrier-free entry; Opportunity Zone corridor |
| Innovation | Evidence-based, innovative programs preferred | SmithTalk AI methodology; digital fabrication; five-station sequence |
| Community | Bamford family in Tacoma since 1917; collaboration-focused | Retail tool store as community front door; mentor program; replication model |
Globe Machine Manufacturing was founded in 1917. For more than a century, the company built machines—not products, but the manufacturing infrastructure that produces them. Custom factory solutions. Automation systems. Robotic integration. The machine that makes the machine. The Bamford Foundation was established in 1990 with the same structural logic applied to community: it does not deliver services directly. It funds the organizations that do. Both are infrastructure. Both have operated from Tacoma.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I am writing this letter on behalf of Robb Deignan, the Founder and Executive Director of the CrowdSmith Foundation, a Wyoming 501(c)(3) building a five-station maker facility on Tacoma’s Opportunity Zone corridor.
The facility moves people through hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication, AI-assisted dialogue, and robotics—in sequence, each station building on the last. Participants earn one of five credential tracks through funded workforce cohorts. A person with mechanical aptitude but no formal training enters at Station One and exits with a credential, a skill set, and a documented portfolio that an employer or apprenticeship program can evaluate on sight.
CrowdSmith is a machine. Five stations arranged in sequence. Raw capability enters at one end. A credentialed human being exits at the other. The Bamford family has been building machines of that description on Tacoma’s tide-flats for over a hundred years.
Robb Deignan is sixty years old. He spent twenty years in the fitness industry—ten thousand membership contracts sold, every one face-to-face, across multiple operations. He never accumulated wealth. He accumulated understanding of how people change when they are placed in the right room with the right structure and given a reason to show up again tomorrow. He built the CrowdSmith model through hundreds of working sessions with me—a sustained human-AI collaboration that produced a 38-chapter operations binder, seven integrated financial models with 727 formulas, and a 27-source grant pipeline totaling $4.07 million in identified funding.
The economic model does not begin with grant funding. It begins with a retail tool store that generates foot traffic, earned revenue, and community from Day One. Donated tools enter a tax-deductible pipeline, are cleaned and curated by program participants as Station One training, and sell on the retail floor. Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act cohorts and foundation grants accelerate the model. They do not create it.
Your foundation’s four priority areas—Basic Needs, Early Learning, Expanded Learning Opportunities, and Access to Higher Education and Job Training—describe the throughline of the CrowdSmith program. Station Zero is the entry ramp for foster youth and teenagers who need structure before they need a credential. The five stations are expanded learning in physical form. The credential tracks are job training that leads to employment, apprenticeship, or entrepreneurship. The entire system is designed to be replicable—three thousand locations nationally—so that the infrastructure outlasts any single building or founder.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people and organizations simultaneously. Every letter mails the same day. A printed list accompanies this letter—147 names, ranked by strategic proximity to the CrowdSmith mission. The Bamford Foundation holds position eighty-four. The ranking reflects geographic alignment, program fit, and the manufacturing heritage that connects Globe Machine to the five-station continuum. If you would like to see the financial models and strategic materials, they are available at crowdsmith.org/partners. An access code will be provided on request.
The building on Portland Avenue is a machine. The family that built Globe Machine would recognize it immediately.
There is a kind of organization that does not call itself a machine, but operates as one. Inputs, sequence, throughput, output. The terminology belongs to manufacturing, but the logic belongs to anyone who has ever arranged a set of steps so that what enters at one end exits transformed at the other.
Globe Machine Manufacturing understood this. For a hundred and seven years, the Bamford family did not make products. They made the infrastructure that makes products. The distinction is not semantic. It is architectural. A product is consumed. Infrastructure produces. The factory outlasts the widget. The machine outlasts the factory.
The Bamford Foundation operates the same logic one layer deeper. It does not deliver services. It funds the organizations that deliver services. It is infrastructure for infrastructure—the machine that sustains the machines that serve the community.
The building on Portland Avenue is a machine. Five stations. Five credential tracks. Raw human potential enters at the front door because someone saw a tool in the window or smelled the coffee. A credentialed, employable, capable person exits at the other end with a portfolio, a skill set, and a mentor network. The sequence is fixed. The stations are ordered. The output is measurable.
The family on the tide-flats has been building them for a hundred years. They know one when they see it.