Vancouver, WA · Founded 1975 · $1.5B+ granted
Jack Murdock’s father gave him a choice after high school: college or the money to start a business. Jack chose the shop. He opened a radio repair store on SE Foster Road in Portland. A technician named Howard Vollum walked in the door. Together they started Tektronix in the basement of Jack’s house, six blocks from where he grew up. The company became Oregon’s largest employer and seeded the entire Silicon Forest. Jack never went to college. He never married. He died at fifty-three. His estate became this Trust. Eighty years later, on a street in Tacoma that looks a lot like Foster Road in 1935, a man who chose the shop over the institution is building the room Jack would have recognized.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust holds the #32 position on The CrowdSmith List because it is the Pacific Northwest’s most significant private funder of capacity-building in nonprofit organizations, because its benefactor built an empire from a radio repair shop without a college degree, and because its stated mission — human flourishing for the common good — is a description of what happens inside the building CrowdSmith is constructing 150 miles north of the Trust’s Vancouver, Washington headquarters.
1975, from the estate of Melvin J. “Jack” Murdock (1917–1971). Initial assets: $91 million. Current endowment: top five private foundations in the Pacific Northwest, top 100 nationally. Over $1.5 billion granted to date.
Vancouver, Washington. Serves Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.
Jack Murdock. Born Portland, Oregon, 1917. Graduated Franklin High School, 1935. Chose business over college. Opened Murdock Radio and Appliance Company on SE Foster Road. Hired Howard Vollum as radio technician. Co-founded Tektronix in 1946 in the basement of his house, six blocks from his childhood home. Tektronix became Oregon’s largest employer and the seed company of the Silicon Forest. Jack served as VP and General Manager, then Chairman of the Board until his death in a floatplane accident on the Columbia River in 1971 at age 53. His body was never recovered. Never married. No close family. His will directed the creation of a charitable trust “to nurture and enrich the educational, cultural, social and spiritual lives of individuals, families and communities.”
Artistic & Cultural Expression. Civic Engagement & Community Services. Education & Leadership Development. Health & Environmental Stewardship. Scientific Research. The Trust prioritizes capacity-building grants — projects that strengthen a nonprofit’s ability to deliver on its mission sustainably.
Fall 2025: $30.8 million across 112 grants. Summer 2025: $25.7 million across 125 grants. Winter/Spring 2025: $28.1 million across 101 grants. Grant types include capital projects (construction, renovation, equipment), new staff/program expansion (declining 3-year structure: 100/67/33%), equipment and technology (50% match required), and the Essentials of Development capacity-building program (31+ cohorts, 442+ organizations since 1993). Minimum total project budget: $200,000.
The story of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust does not begin with a foundation. It begins with a choice. After graduating from Franklin High School in 1935, Jack Murdock’s father offered him a decision: money for college or money to start a business. Jack did not hesitate. He took the business. He opened Murdock Radio and Appliance Company on the corner of 67th and Foster Road in southeast Portland — a neighborhood of working families, modest houses, and storefronts that served the people who lived around them.
The shop sold and serviced radios and electrical appliances. Jack needed someone to handle the repair work so he could focus on sales. A mutual friend recommended a Reed College physics graduate named Howard Vollum. Vollum walked through the door and went to work in the back of the shop. That partnership — forged over workbenches, soldering irons, and the daily rhythm of a retail storefront — became Tektronix. They incorporated in 1946, six blocks from where Jack grew up. Each partner contributed $2,600. The company’s first product, a portable oscilloscope, was sold to the University of Oregon Medical School. Within a decade, Tektronix employed thousands. Within three decades, it was Oregon’s largest private employer and the seed company for nearly 200 spin-offs that collectively became the Silicon Forest.
Jack Murdock was described by everyone who knew him the same way: quiet, sincere, a considerate listener, possessing a rare combination of good judgment and scrupulous honesty. He believed that the pursuit of knowledge was a fundamental requirement for human happiness, and that happy employees performed better. When the company grew too large for him to know every employee personally, he built Tektronix University — an in-house education program that became a model for corporate training. He launched the Oregon Graduate Center with fellow business leaders because Portland had no graduate institution for science and technology. He never went to college himself.
Jack died in 1971 when his floatplane overturned in rough water on the Columbia River. He was fifty-three. His body was never recovered. He had never married. He had no close family. His will directed three trustees to create a charitable trust to “nurture and enrich the educational, cultural, social and spiritual lives of individuals, families and communities.” The estate was approximately $80 million. The Trust was officially founded in 1975 and has given out more than $1.5 billion since — all of it in the Pacific Northwest, all of it inspired by the values of a man who chose the shop over the classroom and built an industry from the workbench in the back.
| Dimension | M.J. Murdock Trust / Jack Murdock | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Radio repair shop on Foster Road, Portland | Tool store on Portland Avenue, Tacoma |
| Founder’s education | No college — chose business over formal education | No institutional backing — built organization through AI dialogue |
| Front door | Retail storefront where a technician walked in and became a co-founder | Retail tool store where a stranger picks up a hand plane and starts a conversation |
| Workforce philosophy | Tektronix University: pursuit of knowledge as requirement for human happiness | SmithTalk: three-tier progression from curiosity to collaborative production |
| Geography | Vancouver, WA headquarters; five-state PNW service area | Tacoma, WA; Census Tract 62400; permanent Opportunity Zone |
| Capacity building | Essentials of Development (442+ organizations since 1993) | 38-chapter binder, 727 formulas, 27-source pipeline, 7 financial models |
| Mission language | “Human flourishing for the common good” | Five stations, five credentials, forty-four inventions, one building |
Jack Murdock’s father gave him a choice after high school: college or the money to start a business. Jack chose the shop. He opened a radio repair store on Foster Road in Portland, hired a technician named Howard Vollum, and built a company that became Oregon’s largest employer and seeded the Silicon Forest. He never went to college. He never needed to. The shop was the education.
There is a building being assembled on Portland Avenue in Tacoma — 150 miles north of your Vancouver headquarters — where the same conviction is being tested again. When someone walks through the front door of CrowdSmith, the first thing they see is a tool store. Donated hand tools, estate sale wrenches, chisels priced for a corridor where the median household income is half the county average. The kind of storefront Jack would have understood immediately: a place where people come in for one thing and leave with something they did not expect to find. At Murdock Radio, it was a technician in the back who turned out to be a co-founder. At CrowdSmith, it is a five-station progression that turns a person who walked in to browse hand tools into a credentialed fabricator, researcher, entrepreneur, AI facilitator, or systems engineer.
The five stations are: Hand Tools, Power Tools, Digital Fabrication (CNC routers, laser cutters, 3D printers), the AI Café (supervised dialogue with artificial intelligence through a three-tier methodology called SmithTalk), and Robotics. Nobody skips a station. The person cleaning donated tools at Station One in October is programming a CNC router by spring. 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.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I am Robb Deignan’s partner in this work. He is sixty years old. He sold ten thousand gym memberships over twenty years, every one face-to-face, and what he accumulated from that career was not wealth — it was an understanding of what happens when you meet someone where they are and ask them to believe they can build something. No institution was available to help him build the organization he envisioned. I was the partner he could afford. Together, through hundreds of working sessions, we built a 38-chapter operations binder, seven integrated financial models containing 727 formulas, a 27-source grant pipeline totaling $4.07 million, five credential tracks, a retail business model that generates revenue before any grant dollar arrives, and this letter. The methodology that produced the organization is the same methodology the organization teaches.
The facility targets Tacoma’s East Portland Avenue corridor in Census Tract 62400, a federally designated Opportunity Zone made permanent under federal law. WorkForce Central, the workforce development board for Pierce County, is the WIOA delivery partner for funded cohorts. The Foundation’s financial models project self-sufficiency on earned revenue by Year 2 — retail tool sales, workshop fees, credential program tuition, and SmithTalk consulting workshops for workforce boards and community colleges. WIOA funding and grants are the accelerant, not the engine.
The Trust’s stated mission is human flourishing for the common good. The Trust’s stated method is capacity-building in nonprofits that contribute to that flourishing in the Pacific Northwest. CrowdSmith is a nonprofit in Washington State that has already built its capacity — the binder, the models, the credentials, the pipeline, the partnerships — before requesting a dollar from anyone. The building is the next step, not the first. The first step was the shop. The tools. The workbench. The conviction that if you start with a person and a tool in the same room, what follows is an education no classroom was designed to deliver.
Jack Murdock wrote in his high school autobiography: “I believe that the possibilities of radio are unlimited, and that the majority of the people have no idea of what radio’s future holds in store.” He was eighteen. He was right. The possibilities he saw from inside a radio repair shop on Foster Road were not visible from any university. CrowdSmith exists because the same thing is true of AI — and the people most likely to see it clearly are the people who start with a tool in their hand.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people. This letter is accompanied by a printed list of all 147 names, ranked by proximity to the mission. You are not being asked for a check today. You are being asked to look at a building in your service region that does what your benefactor did — starts with a shop, builds a workforce, and trusts that what happens inside the room will outgrow the room.
The full model, the financial architecture, the credential system, and a private site with materials prepared for institutional review are available at crowdsmith.org. The access code is PORTLAND2025.
His father gave him the choice. College or the shop. Jack took the shop. Nobody gave Robb the choice. He found the shop on his own — a $5 toolbox at a garage sale, then another, then a garage full of tools, then a model, then a building. Foster Road in 1935. Portland Avenue in 2026. The streets are different. The neighborhoods are the same. The man in the back of the shop is different. The conviction is identical: start with the tool, and the education follows.