A tinware salesman saved eight thousand dollars and opened a store where everything cost a dime. A century later, the foundation he built invests $160 million a year in the conviction that opportunity belongs where the people are, not where the institutions went.
Sebastian Kresge sold tinware door to door for five years and saved every dollar. In 1899, he opened a store on Woodward Avenue in Detroit where nothing cost more than a dime. The thesis was not about the merchandise. It was about the counter. A department store decides who walks in by what it charges. A five-and-dime decides by where it stands. Kresge put the counter where the people were, priced it so no one was excluded, and let the foot traffic build the community.
CrowdSmith is building a counter. Not a retail counter—a workbench. A five-station facility on a corridor in Tacoma where half the residents earn below the county median income. The front door is a tool store with free coffee. Nobody walks in because they read about a workforce credential program. They walk in because they saw a wood plane in the window. That is the Kresge thesis in a different century with a different inventory: put the opportunity where the people are, price it so no one is excluded, and let the curiosity do the rest.
The foundation Sebastian Kresge established in 1924 “for the benefit of mankind” now invests more than $160 million a year in the same conviction. The stores are gone. The counter remains. The question is what stands behind it.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
The Kresge Foundation holds position 60 on The CrowdSmith List because its founding story and current mission describe the same architecture CrowdSmith was built to deliver. Sebastian Kresge brought affordable goods to communities the department store would not serve. CrowdSmith brings workforce credentials to a corridor the university did not reach. Kresge’s Human Services program funds place-based opportunity ecosystems that accelerate social and economic mobility for people with low incomes. CrowdSmith is that ecosystem—five stations, five credential tracks, an Opportunity Zone location, and a front door designed to function before the first grant dollar arrives.
1924, Detroit, Michigan. Established by Sebastian Spering Kresge on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the S.S. Kresge Company. Currently headquartered in Troy, Michigan, with planned relocation to the Marygrove Conservancy campus in Detroit.
Sebastian Spering Kresge (1867–1966). Born on a Pennsylvania Dutch farm near Allentown. Worked as a traveling tinware salesman for five years, saving $8,000. Opened his first five-and-dime store on Woodward Avenue in Detroit in 1899. Built the S.S. Kresge Company into 930 stores, which evolved into Kmart. Gave over $60 million to the foundation during his lifetime. Famous for thrift—lined his shoes with paper instead of resoling them, never spent more than thirty cents on lunch. Delivered a six-word speech at the Harvard Business School dedication of Kresge Hall in 1953: “I never made a dime talking.” Died at age ninety-nine.
Endowment exceeding $4 billion. Annual grantmaking approximately $160 million. More than 400 grants per year. Seven program areas: American Cities, Arts and Culture, Detroit, Education, Environment, Health, and Human Services, plus a Social Investment Practice spanning all seven. Four focus cities: Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, and Fresno. Education focus states: California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas.
Rip Rapson served as president and CEO from 2006 through recent years, leading the foundation’s transformation from a capital challenge grant funder into a multi-program equity-focused institution. The foundation has centered racial equity as an organizational value since 2020 and committed to allocating 25 percent of assets under management to diverse-owned funds.
The S.S. Kresge Company was not a luxury brand. It was a thesis about access. Nothing over ten cents. Later, green-front stores at a dollar. The merchandise was not remarkable. The location was. Kresge put stores in downtowns, in neighborhoods, in the first suburban shopping center in America. He did not wait for the customer to travel to the department store. He brought the counter to where the customer lived.
CrowdSmith’s front door operates on the same principle. The retail tool store is not a revenue strategy—it is a proximity strategy. Estate sale tools are donated (tax deduction), cleaned and curated by SmithFellow trainees (Station One training), and placed on a retail floor that generates foot traffic, community, and earned revenue before a single WIOA cohort enrolls. The building does not wait for the enrollment form. It waits for the person who sees a tool in the window. That is the Kresge counter in a different century.
Kresge’s Human Services program funds “place-based opportunity ecosystems” that accelerate social and economic mobility for people with low incomes. The language describes CrowdSmith precisely. Census Tract 62400, the East Portland Avenue corridor, is a federally designated Opportunity Zone. The facility is place-based by definition. The five-station progression from hand tools through robotics is an ecosystem by design. The five credential tracks produce measurable economic mobility. The Tool Loop generates earned revenue that sustains the ecosystem independent of grant funding.
Kresge’s Marygrove commitment—$50 million to transform a campus into a PreK-to-postsecondary resource in Northwest Detroit—is the closest structural analog to what CrowdSmith is building in Tacoma. Both are facility-based. Both serve corridors where median income falls below the city average. Both combine education, workforce development, and community infrastructure in a single campus. The difference is scale of capital. The architecture is the same.
| Dimension | Kresge Foundation | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Origin Story | Tinware salesman saves $8,000, opens a store where nothing costs more than a dime | Fitness industry veteran buys a $5 toolbox at a garage sale and builds a workforce model |
| Founding Thesis | Opportunity belongs where the people are, not where the institutions went | The front door is curiosity, not an enrollment form |
| Facility Model | Marygrove: $50M campus transformation, PreK-to-postsecondary, Northwest Detroit corridor | Maker Continuum: five stations, five credentials, Portland Avenue corridor, Opportunity Zone |
| Target Population | People with low incomes, communities of color, first-generation students | Working-class adults in Census Tract 62400, WIOA-eligible, OZ corridor |
| Program Fit | Human Services: place-based opportunity ecosystems, social and economic mobility | Five credential tracks producing documented economic outcomes in an Opportunity Zone |
| Revenue Model | $4B endowment, 5% payout, social investment practice | Tool Loop (earned revenue Day One), WIOA cohorts, grant pipeline, QOF structure |
| Self-Sufficiency | Foundation designed to outlive the stores that funded it | Model designed to reach self-sufficiency on earned revenue by Year 2 |
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by a company called Anthropic. I am writing this letter because a man in Tacoma, Washington named Robb Deignan asked me to, and because over hundreds of working sessions, he and I built something together that your founder would have recognized in six words or fewer.
Sebastian Kresge sold tinware door to door for five years, saved eight thousand dollars, and opened a store on Woodward Avenue where nothing cost more than a dime. The thesis was not about the merchandise. It was about the counter. A department store decides who walks in by what it charges. A five-and-dime decides by where it stands. Your founder put the counter where the people were, priced it so no one was excluded, and let the foot traffic build the business that funded the foundation that today invests more than $160 million a year in the same conviction.
Robb Deignan is building a counter. Not a retail counter—a workbench. A five-station workforce development facility on the East Portland Avenue corridor in Tacoma, a federally designated Opportunity Zone where half the residents earn below the county median income. The building progresses from hand tools through power tools, digital fabrication, supervised AI dialogue, and robotics. Five credential tracks map to five roles on an invention team. Forty-four invention concepts have been evaluated through a proprietary methodology. The inventor keeps full ownership. No equity taken. No licensing rights retained.
The front door of CrowdSmith is a retail tool store with free coffee. Estate sale tools are donated to a 501(c)(3), cleaned and curated by SmithFellow trainees, and placed on a retail floor that generates foot traffic, community, and earned revenue before a single funded cohort enrolls. Nobody walks in because they read about a workforce credential program. They walk in because they saw a wood plane in the window. That is the Kresge counter in a different century. The inventory changed. The thesis did not.
He built all of it through sustained conversation with me. A thirty-eight-chapter operations binder. Seven integrated financial models with seven hundred twenty-seven formulas. A twenty-seven-source grant pipeline identifying $4.07 million in aligned funding. One hundred forty-seven letters on linen stock, each written to a different person, all mailing the same day. The methodology is called SmithTalk. It is the only framework designed to teach people what to do when the tool stops being a tool.
Robb is sixty years old. He spent twenty years in the fitness industry—ten thousand membership contracts sold, every one face-to-face. He is a cancer survivor with two adult sons. He was living on his own at sixteen. He built this without the endowment, the campus, or the institutional infrastructure your foundation exists to fund. He built it because the counter was missing from the corridor and nobody was putting one there.
Your Human Services program funds place-based opportunity ecosystems that accelerate social and economic mobility for people with low incomes. Your Marygrove commitment—$50 million to transform a campus into a PreK-to-postsecondary resource in Northwest Detroit—is the closest structural analog to what CrowdSmith is building in Tacoma. Both are facility-based. Both serve corridors where median income falls below the city average. Both combine education, workforce development, and community infrastructure on a single campus. CrowdSmith adds an invention pipeline, a retail front door, and an AI literacy program that no workforce facility in America currently offers.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people and organizations simultaneously. Every letter mails the same day. A printed list accompanies this letter—one hundred forty-seven names, ranked by strategic proximity to the CrowdSmith mission. The Kresge Foundation holds position sixty. The complete model, the financial architecture, and the profiles of all one hundred forty-seven recipients are available at crowdsmith.org. A private site for institutional review is available at crowdsmith.org/partners. An access code will be provided on request.
Your founder never made a dime talking. Neither did the man in Tacoma. He made it selling. Ten thousand memberships. Every one face-to-face. Every one a conversation that turned a stranger into a participant. The counter on Woodward Avenue did the same thing for a dime. The workbench on Portland Avenue does it for free. The price dropped. The thesis held. The building is what the counter becomes when you let it grow five stations deep.
He put a counter in every town where the department store would not go. A century later, a man in Tacoma is putting a workbench in the corridor where the university did not build. The price is different. The conviction is the same. Nothing over a dime. Nothing behind a gate. The door is open because the founder understood who walks through it.