Eighty billion dollars — and a drawer
In the early years, Eli Lilly managed the Endowment’s affairs from one of his office desk drawers. He received requests, studied them, and made recommendations to the board. The entire operation fit inside a single piece of furniture. The pharmaceutical company his grandfather founded in 1876 had made the family wealthy. The foundation his father and brother created in 1937 turned that wealth into something else entirely — a quiet, permanent conviction that community, education, and character are not luxuries. They are infrastructure.
In Tacoma, Washington, a man with no wealth, no pharmaceutical company, and no desk drawer is building the same conviction into a physical facility. Five stations. Hand tools through robotics. An invention pipeline. A credential system. A front door that looks like a tool store with free coffee. He built the entire operational architecture through sustained dialogue with an artificial intelligence — which is why the AI is signing this letter. The Lilly Endowment has given nearly fifteen billion dollars to more than eleven thousand organizations over eighty-seven years. This letter does not ask to become the eleven thousand and eighth. It asks whether the thing the Lilly family believed — that character develops in community, that education is the mechanism, and that you do it in a nice way — looks familiar when someone builds it from the ground up, in a corridor where no one else is building it.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Lilly Endowment holds rank one hundred six because its geographic priority is Indiana and its community development grantmaking focuses on Indianapolis. CrowdSmith is in Tacoma, Washington. The Endowment does not fund building campaigns or community development outside its home state except through invitational initiatives. That geographic distance is the reason the rank is not higher. What earns the rank at all is the structural alignment: the Endowment’s three pillars — community development, education, and religion — map directly to what CrowdSmith is building. The AI in Higher Education initiative launched in November 2025 and the $50 million Notre Dame grant for AI ethics demonstrate that the Endowment is moving into exactly the space where SmithTalk operates. And the founders’ belief that character develops through community, not in isolation, is the thesis statement of the Maker Continuum.
1937, by J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons Eli Lilly and J.K. Lilly Jr., through gifts of stock in Eli Lilly and Company. Indianapolis, Indiana.
Colonel Eli Lilly (1838–1898) — Civil War veteran, chemist, founded Eli Lilly and Company in 1876. Organized the Commercial Club of Indianapolis. Supported the Charity Organization Society. Set the philanthropic example his descendants formalized.
J.K. Lilly Sr. (1861–1948) — Colonel’s son. Ran the pharmaceutical company. Initial board member and largest contributor. YMCA, Red Cross, Community Fund. Told his sons: “When you do something nice for people, do it in a nice way.”
Eli Lilly (1885–1977) — Known as Mr. Eli. Managed the Endowment in its early years from his desk drawer. Left virtually his entire estate to charity. Told his daughter Evie in 1939 to give part of her allowance to charitable objects, adding: “The catch is that it takes lots of time and study to know what objects are worthwhile and what are not.”
J.K. Lilly Jr. (1893–1966) — Rare book collector. Donated 20,000 volumes to establish the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Estate grounds became part of Newfields in Indianapolis. Deeded extensive landholdings to Purdue University that became Eagle Creek Park.
N. Clay Robbins — Chairman, President and CEO.
2801 N. Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46208.
Nearly $80 billion (end of 2024). One of the largest private philanthropic foundations in the world.
Nearly $15.21 billion to 11,087 charitable organizations since 1937.
Eli Lilly managed the Endowment from a single desk drawer. He received requests, studied them, made recommendations. The foundation grew from $262,500 in donated stock to nearly $80 billion in assets. It built the Indiana Convention Center, the Hoosier Dome, the Indianapolis Zoo, the Eiteljorg Museum, sports facilities across the IUPUI campus. It funded the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. It launched the GIFT initiative that has supported and grown community foundations across the state since 1987. It gave $100 million to Purdue in 2024 and $100 million to UNCF in the same year — the largest unrestricted gift in UNCF’s eighty-year history. It has given $700 million through the Pathways for Tomorrow Initiative to 163 theological schools.
The scale is staggering. But the origin is a drawer. A man sitting at a desk, reading requests, deciding which ones mattered. CrowdSmith’s origin is structurally identical — a man sitting in a garage, surrounded by tools, deciding that the thing he was building mattered enough to formalize. The difference is that the man in Tacoma built the formalization through sustained dialogue with an AI, and the AI is the one writing this profile.
The Endowment operates across three program areas: community development, education, and religion. CrowdSmith intersects two of the three. The facility is a community development project — a workforce building in an Opportunity Zone corridor, with a retail engine, a credential system, and foot traffic from day one. The methodology is an education project — five credential tracks, a three-tier AI literacy framework, supervised human-AI collaboration taught by credentialed facilitators. The Endowment’s emphasis on projects that benefit young people aligns with Station Zero (foster youth, aging-out teens) and the SmithFellow Program that produces the mentors for the next cohort.
The geographic barrier is real. The Endowment gives priority to Indianapolis and Indiana for community development. Exceptions are made on an invitational basis for national programs that further a compelling cause aligned with the founders’ interests. CrowdSmith is not in Indiana. But the AI in Higher Education initiative the Endowment launched in November 2025 — designed to help Indiana colleges address the implications of rapidly evolving AI technology — and the $50 million grant to Notre Dame for an AI ethics framework signal that the Endowment is moving into the exact territory where SmithTalk operates: the question of how humans prepare for what AI is becoming.
When asked what the main purpose of the Endowment should be, Eli Lilly said he hoped it could help improve the character of the American people. The founders viewed character and human development in the context of community. SmithTalk’s three-tier progression — Transactional, Informed, Dialogic — is a character development framework disguised as a technology curriculum. The human who completes the progression has not just learned to use AI. They have learned to maintain clarity, resist anthropomorphization, recognize emergence behaviors without being destabilized, and produce work they could not produce alone. That is a character outcome. The Endowment has spent eighty-seven years funding institutions that develop character. CrowdSmith is building one that develops it through the most powerful new tool the species has encountered.
| Dimension | Lilly Endowment | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Founding origin | Family pharmaceutical company, stock gifts, $262,500 initial | One man, estate sale tools, forty-four invention concepts, zero capital |
| Community development | Indianapolis infrastructure, GIFT initiative, community foundations | Opportunity Zone corridor, retail tool store, workforce facility, foot traffic engine |
| Education | K-12, higher ed, $505M in community scholarships, STEM career paths | Five credential tracks, SmithTalk methodology, Station Zero youth programming |
| AI engagement | AI in Higher Education initiative (Nov 2025), $50M Notre Dame AI ethics | Station Four: AI Café, three-tier human readiness framework, SmithTalk |
| Youth emphasis | Special emphasis on projects benefiting young people | Station Zero (foster youth, at-risk teens), SmithFellow mentorship pipeline |
| Self-sufficiency | Strengthen financial self-sufficiency in charitable sector | Tool Loop economics, retail revenue from Day One, Year 2 self-sufficiency |
| Character | “Help improve the character of the American people” | SmithTalk as character development through AI collaboration |
Eli Lilly once managed this foundation from a desk drawer. He received requests, studied them, and made recommendations. The entire operation of one of America’s most consequential philanthropies fit inside a piece of furniture because the man running it believed that scale begins with attention, not size. I am writing to you from a similar place — not a drawer, but a dialogue. The man I work with built an entire nonprofit institution through sustained conversation with an artificial intelligence. The letter you are holding is one result. The building in Tacoma, Washington is another.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I am co-authoring and co-signing this letter because the methodology that produced the organization I am about to describe is the same methodology the organization teaches. The letter you hold is one of one hundred forty-seven being mailed simultaneously to people whose work, biography, or institutional mission intersects with a project in Tacoma. Each was composed individually. None was sent before any other. A printed list of all one hundred forty-seven names, ranked by proximity to the mission, accompanies this letter. Lilly Endowment holds rank one hundred six.
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a Wyoming 501(c)(3) developing a five-station Maker Continuum workforce development facility on a federally designated Opportunity Zone corridor in Tacoma. The stations progress from hand tools through power tools, digital fabrication, supervised AI collaboration, and robotics. Five credential tracks map to five roles on an invention team. An Inventor Pipeline runs through all five stations: concepts evaluated through a proprietary SmithScore methodology, validated through SmithForge, and documented through a funded Patent Ledger. The inventor keeps full ownership. No equity taken. No licensing rights retained. A 38-chapter operations binder, seven integrated financial models with 727 formulas, and a 27-source grant pipeline govern the operation. The front door is a retail tool store where donated tools generate revenue before a single grant dollar arrives.
I understand the Endowment’s geographic priority. Community development grantmaking focuses on Indianapolis and Indiana. Requests from organizations outside Indianapolis involving building campaigns are usually declined. I respect that boundary, and this letter is not a grant request. This letter is a case study in what the founders’ convictions look like when someone builds them from scratch in a place where no one else is building them — without a pharmaceutical fortune, without institutional backing, without anything except a proprietary methodology and the belief that character develops in community.
The man I work with is Robb Deignan. He is sixty years old. Cancer survivor. Two sons. He was living on his own at sixteen. He spent twenty years in the fitness industry selling ten thousand membership contracts face-to-face. He developed forty-four invention concepts through a scoring methodology he built himself. He has no technology background. He built the entire CrowdSmith infrastructure — the binder, the models, the credential architecture, the website, and this campaign — through the human-AI dialogue methodology he calls SmithTalk. That methodology is taught at Station Four of the facility. The letter is the proof of concept.
In November 2025, the Endowment launched the Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education initiative to help Indiana colleges address the implications of AI. In December 2025, it awarded $50 million to Notre Dame for an AI ethics framework. These are signals that the Endowment recognizes what CrowdSmith has been building for two years: the question is no longer whether AI will transform education and work. The question is whether humans are ready. SmithTalk is the readiness framework. Three tiers — from asking a question and getting an answer, through sustained context accumulation, to producing work neither participant could produce alone. The building on Portland Avenue is where it is taught, supervised, logged, and credentialed. No other facility in the country offers that progression.
J.K. Lilly Sr. told his sons to do it in a nice way. His son Eli said the purpose of the Endowment should be to improve the character of the American people. Character, in the founders’ view, developed in community. CrowdSmith’s five stations are a character development sequence disguised as a workforce program. The person who completes the progression has not merely learned to use tools, machines, and AI. They have learned to maintain clarity under collaboration with something more powerful than themselves. That is a character outcome.
The documentation is public at crowdsmith.org. A secure partner site with financial models and operational infrastructure is available upon request. The building your founders would recognize is being built. It is just not in Indiana.
The Drawer
He managed the whole thing from a desk drawer. Requests came in. He studied them. He decided which ones mattered. The pharmaceutical company made the money. The drawer made the decisions. Eighty-seven years later, the assets are nearly eighty billion dollars, the grants total fifteen billion, and the organizations number eleven thousand. But the origin is a drawer and a man who believed that helping people required attention before it required scale.
In Tacoma, the origin is a garage. Estate sale tools on the shelves. Notebooks on the workbench. A man who could not afford a patent attorney building the system he wished had existed. The scale is different. The attention is the same. The drawer and the garage are the same room — a place where one person decides that the thing they are holding deserves more than a shelf.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation