The Man Who Standardized the Stud · Fifty Years of Tacoma
In 1936, every bank in Tacoma turned Ben Cheney down. He had $14,000 saved during the Depression, a lumber company that lost money in its first year, and a pile of waste wood from railroad tie mills that nobody knew what to do with. Broom handles, fence posts, toothpicks—he considered them all. Then the answer came to him in the middle of the night: cut the slabs into eight-foot studs and sell them to the housing market. The standard building stud. The piece of lumber inside every wall in America. He invented it because he was looking at what everyone else threw away and saw what it could become.
The building on Portland Avenue does the same thing with people.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
The Ben B. Cheney Foundation holds position #68 because of its deep Tacoma roots, its fifty-year grantmaking history in Pierce County, its explicit focus on youth development and career-track programming, and a $90 million endowment that distributes approximately $3 million annually. Its preference for capital and equipment grants, its history of supporting career-training organizations like the Youth Marine Foundation, and its geographic mandate covering every community where Cheney Lumber operated—starting with Tacoma—place it squarely in CrowdSmith’s funding landscape.
Ben Bradbury Cheney. March 24, 1905, Lima, Montana. Died May 18, 1971, Tacoma, Washington. Age 66.
Moved to South Bend, Washington, at age nine to live with his grandparents. Played football, basketball, and baseball at South Bend High for two years before dropping out to work. Father Victor Couvorette, a Catholic priest, ran the youth baseball program—supplied uniforms, equipment, and streetcar fare so his players could get to games. Couvorette planted the seed that became Cheney’s lifelong philanthropy for youth sports.
Moved to Tacoma in 1924 to attend business college. Worked for a string of lumber companies. Founded Cheney Lumber Company in May 1936 with $14,000 saved during the Depression. Lost $111 in his first two months and $512 in his first year. Every bank in Tacoma refused him a loan.
Son: Brad Cheney (executive director 2003–2023, now board chair). Daughter: Piper Cheney. Grandson: Henry Cheney (played for the Seattle Cheney Studs, won the 2019 National Baseball Congress World Series MVP).
Incorporated 1955. Endowed by Cheney’s estate after his death in 1971. Active grantmaking began 1975. Cheney Lumber sold to Louisiana-Pacific Corporation in 1974; proceeds seeded the endowment. Current endowment: $90 million+. Executive Director: Erika Tucci (appointed November 2023, succeeding Brad Cheney). Address: 3110 Ruston Way, Suite A, Tacoma, WA 98402. EIN 91-6053760.
Approximately $3 million annually through 100–150 grants. Through 2022: more than 6,000 grants to 1,500+ organizations totaling over $113 million. More than half of all giving stays in Washington, with Tacoma and Pierce County as the primary focus. Grants range from $100 to $500,000. Board-level grants typically $20,000–$40,000. Small grants under $15,000 processed on a faster track. 2025 marks the foundation’s fiftieth anniversary of active grantmaking.
The Cheney Lumber Company was originally established to manufacture railroad ties. The problem was waste: two-thirds of every log was discarded as side-cut slabs after the ties were cut. Cheney considered broom handles, fence posts, lath, and toothpicks. None of them worked. The answer arrived in the middle of the night: cut the waste into eight-foot lengths and sell them as wall studs to the housing market.
By 1940, large railroad carloads of two-by-fours were shipping across the country. Eight-foot ceilings became the residential construction standard because Cheney’s studs made them economical. The innovation eliminated enormous waste, reduced heating costs for homeowners, and transformed Cheney Lumber from a struggling tie mill into a regional powerhouse with operations in Tacoma, Medford, Greenville, Pondosa, and Arcata.
The stud is the most invisible and most essential piece of a building. It is the structural member that holds up every wall, that carries every load, that makes every room possible. Nobody sees it after the drywall goes up. But without it, there is no building.
Cheney sponsored more than 5,000 young athletes in baseball, football, basketball, soccer, and bowling across every community where Cheney Lumber operated. He held an eleven-percent stake in the San Francisco Giants and personally contributed $100,000 to cover construction overruns at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma—today home to the Tacoma Rainiers. A life-size bronze statue of Ben Cheney, holding a scorecard and a bag of peanuts, occupies a front-row seat in the grandstand.
The foundation’s eight grantmaking categories—Charity, Civic, Culture, Education, Elderly, Health, Social Services, and Youth—reflect the full range of Cheney’s interests. The Youth category specifically targets programs helping young people gain the skills to become responsible and productive adults. The foundation has made significant investments in career-track organizations, including Tacoma’s Youth Marine Foundation, which prepares young people for maritime industry careers, and the Boys and Girls Club of South Puget Sound. Its preference for capital and equipment grants—facilities and infrastructure that outlast the grant cycle—distinguishes it from most foundations in the region.
In its fiftieth anniversary year, the foundation honored six long-term partners with special grants: Charles Wright Academy, MultiCare Tacoma, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma Rescue Mission, the YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties, and the Seattle Cheney Studs baseball program founded by Ben Cheney in 1954.
| Dimension | Ben B. Cheney Foundation | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Geography | Tacoma and Pierce County as primary focus | Portland Avenue corridor, Census Tract 62400, Tacoma |
| Youth | Programs helping young people gain skills for productive adulthood | Station Zero for foster youth; five credential tracks from age 16+ |
| Capital | Prefers equipment and facility grants with long-lasting impact | Five-station facility with permanent manufacturing equipment |
| Career Training | Youth Marine Foundation, career education, vocational scholarships | Five credential tracks through funded WIOA cohorts |
| Innovation | Prefers new and innovative approaches to community problems | SmithTalk AI methodology; digital fabrication; five-station sequence |
| Sustainability | Evaluates plans for sustaining impact beyond the grant | Retail tool store generates earned revenue from Day One; grants accelerate, not create |
| Lumber | Founded from Cheney Lumber; timber communities as giving geography | Station One: hand tools. Station Two: power tools. Wood is the first material |
Ben Cheney looked at waste wood from railroad tie mills and saw a wall. Two-thirds of every log was being discarded as side-cut slabs. He tried broom handles, fence posts, lath. None of them worked. Then the answer came in the middle of the night: standard eight-foot studs for the housing market. The piece of lumber that holds up every wall in America exists because a man in Tacoma refused to accept that the material in front of him was waste.
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 building on Portland Avenue does with human potential what Cheney did with slab wood. It takes what the existing system discards—people with aptitude but no credential, curiosity but no pathway, mechanical instinct but no institution—and runs them through a sequence that produces something structural.
The facility moves people through hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication, AI-assisted dialogue, and robotics. Each station builds on the last. Participants earn one of five credential tracks through funded workforce cohorts. The first material they touch is wood. The first station is hand tools. The progression from there—through powered tools, CNC, laser cutting, 3D printing, and robotic manufacturing proof—mirrors the industrial evolution that Cheney Lumber itself traversed from portable tie mills to standardized production.
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—free coffee, donated inventory, community foot traffic from Day One. Donated tools enter a tax-deductible pipeline, are cleaned and restored by program participants as Station One training, and sell on the retail floor. The retail operation is the financial foundation. Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act cohorts and foundation grants accelerate the model. They do not create it. The Cheney Foundation evaluates whether grantees have a plan for sustaining impact beyond the grant. CrowdSmith was designed from the first spreadsheet to answer that question before it was asked.
Your foundation prefers to fund equipment and facilities that will have a long-lasting impact on community needs. The five-station continuum is exactly that—permanent manufacturing and training infrastructure built to serve cohort after cohort. Your Youth category targets programs that help young people gain the skills to become responsible and productive adults. Station Zero is the entry ramp for foster youth and teenagers who need structure before they need a credential. The five credential tracks are the pathway from aptitude to employment.
Ben Cheney arrived in Tacoma in 1924 with borrowed money and no connections. He dropped out of high school. Every bank turned him down. Father Couvorette gave him baseball equipment and streetcar fare when he was a boy in South Bend, and that act of generosity became the template for everything Cheney built—5,000 sponsored athletes, a stadium, a foundation that has distributed more than $113 million in fifty years. CrowdSmith exists because a similar logic is at work: the room matters. The tool in the hand matters. The person behind the counter who answers the question matters. The building is the intervention.
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 Ben B. Cheney Foundation holds position sixty-eight. The ranking reflects Tacoma geography, youth development alignment, capital grant preference, and the fact that a foundation built from a lumber company knows what it means when someone looks at raw material and sees a building. 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.
He looked at a pile of wasted wood and saw a wall. The building on Portland Avenue looks at wasted potential and sees the same thing.
Nobody sees the stud after the drywall goes up. It is the most invisible piece of a building and the most essential. Every wall depends on it. Every room exists because of it. Every load is carried by it. The homeowner never thinks about it. The architect draws around it. The painter covers it. But the carpenter knows. The carpenter put it there.
Ben Cheney did not invent lumber. He did not invent the wall. He looked at what the industry was throwing away—slabs cut from the sides of logs after the railroad ties were extracted—and saw eight feet of structural potential where everyone else saw waste. He cut it to length, gave it a name, shipped it by the railcar, and changed the way America builds houses.
There is a version of that story that plays out every day in every city. A person walks past a building. The building has tools inside it. The person has aptitude inside them. The distance between the two is one open door, one answered question, one reason to come back tomorrow. The existing system calls that person “unskilled.” The existing system is looking at the slab and seeing waste.
The building on Portland Avenue sees the stud.