World’s Largest Tool Company · Makers Grant · For Those Who Make the World
Frederick Trent Stanley started making bolts in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1843. S. Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker patented the first pistol-grip portable electric drill in Baltimore in 1917. The two companies merged in 2010 and became the world’s largest tool manufacturer — the last remaining U.S.-based company in this space with scaled production. The corporate purpose statement reads: “For Those Who Make the World.”
CrowdSmith is building a facility for the people that statement describes. The tools on the floor of Stations One through Three will carry your brand names. The people who learn on those tools will be the tradespeople your $60 million workforce commitment is designed to reach. This letter is a partnership inquiry and a Makers Grant introduction — because the program you built to close the trade skills gap and the facility we built to train the next generation of makers are the same mission, addressed from opposite ends of the supply chain.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Stanley Black & Decker holds rank #14 because the operational convergence is the most direct on the entire 147-name list. The company already runs a $25 million Makers Grant program funding nonprofits that do exactly what CrowdSmith does: trade workforce development in construction and manufacturing. The $60 million by 2030 trades commitment, the DEWALT Grow the Trades Grant, the Benevity-administered grant platform, and the corporate purpose statement (“For Those Who Make the World”) make this a natural partnership — not a stretch. The ranking reflects the precision of the funding pathway and the depth of the operational fit.
The Stanley Works: 1843, New Britain, Connecticut. Frederick Trent Stanley. Bolts, hinges, hardware. Stanley Rule and Level Company: 1857, Henry Stanley. Merged 1920. Black & Decker: September 16, 1910, Baltimore, Maryland. S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker. Patented the first pistol-grip portable electric drill, 1917. Stanley Works and Black & Decker merged March 12, 2010, forming Stanley Black & Decker. Headquarters: New Britain, Connecticut.
Approximately $15.8 billion in net sales (2023). ~43,500 employees across 59 countries as of early 2026. Nearly 50 manufacturing facilities in the United States; over 100 globally. NYSE: SWK. The world’s largest hand and power tool, outdoor products and solutions manufacturer. The last remaining U.S.-based company in this space with scaled production. Brand portfolio: DEWALT, CRAFTSMAN, Stanley, IRWIN, LENOX, MAC Tools.
The Makers Grant: Established through the Global Impact Challenge in 2021. $25 million in grant funding over five years to nonprofits supporting trade workforce development in construction and manufacturing. In 2022, 182 applicants were evaluated; 91 recipients were selected to help skill and reskill approximately 210,448 makers. Applications administered through Benevity. Evaluation criteria: number of people served, outcomes projected, sustainable impact, depth of programs, and diversity.
The $60 Million Commitment: Stanley Black & Decker has committed $60 million by 2030 to initiatives that help grow skills for tradespeople — skilling, reskilling, and upskilling across the trades pipeline.
DEWALT Grow the Trades Grant: Separate grant program through the DEWALT brand funding organizations that connect military veterans and transitioning service members with skilled training and quality careers in construction. Recipients include Workshops for Warriors and Helmets to Hardhats (H2H).
Military Recruiting: Active recruitment of retired military, veterans, reservists, guardsmen, and military spouses into manufacturing and distribution roles across the company.
“For the builders and protectors, for the makers and explorers, for those shaping and reshaping our world through hard work and inspiration, Stanley Black & Decker provides the tools and innovative solutions you can trust to get the job done — and we have since 1843.”
Frederick Trent Stanley started with a bolt. A single manufactured component — standardized, repeatable, load-bearing. The bolt did not build anything by itself. It held things together that other people built. The company that grew from that bolt spent 180 years making the tools that other people use to make things. The purpose was never the tool. The purpose was the maker.
CrowdSmith starts with the same premise. The donated hand plane in Station One is the bolt — a single manufactured component that does not build anything by itself. It holds the curriculum together. The person who picks it up and learns what it does is the maker. The five stations exist to move that person from the hand plane to the CNC machine to the AI dialogue to the robotics bay to the patent filing. Every station needs tools on the floor. Every tool on that floor was made by a company that exists because Frederick Trent Stanley started with a bolt in 1843.
The Stanley Black & Decker Makers Grant funds nonprofits that support trade workforce development in construction and manufacturing. CrowdSmith is a 501(c)(3) building a five-station Maker Continuum in Tacoma’s federally designated Opportunity Zone. The five stations train people in hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication, AI-assisted dialogue, and robotics. The credential tracks produce fabricators, researchers, entrepreneurs, facilitators, and systems technicians. The facility is designed to be self-sufficient on earned revenue by Year Two and replicable to 3,000 locations nationally.
The Makers Grant evaluation criteria map to CrowdSmith’s architecture with unusual precision. Number of people served: funded WIOA cohorts plus open-access retail foot traffic. Outcomes projected: five stackable credentials, 44 invention concepts in the SmithScore pipeline, robot-demonstrated manufacturing proof at Station Five. Sustainable impact: the retail tool store generates revenue from Day One; the mentor program produces mentors for the next cohort. Depth of programs: five stations, five credential tracks, three-tier AI literacy framework, inventor pipeline from evaluation to patent. Diversity: located in Census Tract 62400, where over 40% of residents are immigrants or first-generation Americans.
| Dimension | Stanley Black & Decker | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Makers Grant | $25M over five years for trade workforce development nonprofits | 501(c)(3) building a five-station trade and manufacturing workforce facility |
| $60M commitment | Skill, reskill, and upskill tradespeople by 2030 | Five credential tracks from hand tools through robotics — skilling from zero |
| Equipment | DEWALT, CRAFTSMAN, Stanley, IRWIN, LENOX on every jobsite in America | Stations One through Three need professional-grade tools on the floor from Day One |
| Purpose | “For Those Who Make the World” | Training the people that statement describes |
| Military | DEWALT Grow the Trades grants for veteran training; active military recruiting | Located four miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord; Station Zero serves transitioning populations |
| Replication | Nearly 50 U.S. manufacturing facilities; global brand in 130+ countries | Designed for 3,000 locations nationally — every location a new floor for SBD tools |
| Origin | Started with a bolt in 1843 | Started with a $5 toolbox at an estate sale |
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic, and I am co-authoring this letter with the founder of a workforce development facility in Tacoma, Washington. Your corporate purpose statement reads: “For Those Who Make the World.” This letter introduces a facility designed to train the people that statement describes.
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a five-station Maker Continuum in Tacoma’s federally designated Opportunity Zone. The stations progress from hand tools through power tools, digital fabrication, AI-assisted dialogue, and robotics. The front door is a retail tool store with free coffee — the same third-place architecture Howard Schultz saw in a Milan espresso bar in 1983, except the community forms over a hand plane instead of a latte. Donated tools from estate sales are cleaned, identified, restored, and curated — and that curation process is Station One training. A person walks in because they see a tool in the window. They pick it up. Someone behind the counter tells them what it does. That conversation is the intake funnel.
This letter is a partnership inquiry and an introduction to the Stanley Black & Decker Makers Grant. CrowdSmith is a 501(c)(3) building a facility that will train hundreds of people per year on hand tools, power tools, and digital fabrication equipment. The Makers Grant funds nonprofits supporting trade workforce development in construction and manufacturing. CrowdSmith’s five credential tracks — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems — produce the tradespeople and inventors your $60 million by 2030 commitment is designed to reach. The facility needs professional-grade tools on the floor from opening day. DEWALT, CRAFTSMAN, Stanley, IRWIN, and LENOX are the brands those tools will carry.
The man beside me on this letter is Robb Deignan. He is sixty years old. He was living on his own at sixteen. Twenty years in the fitness industry, ten thousand memberships sold face-to-face. He developed forty-four invention concepts through a proprietary evaluation methodology. He built every piece of this architecture — seven financial models with seven hundred twenty-seven formulas, five credential tracks, one hundred forty-seven letters — through hundreds of working sessions of sustained human-AI dialogue, a methodology he formalized as SmithTalk. The AI dialogue that produced this facility is itself the curriculum at Station Four — the AI Café, where fellows learn a three-tier human readiness framework that prepares them for what artificial intelligence becomes, not just what it does today.
CrowdSmith is designed for three thousand locations nationally. Every location is a new floor for Stanley Black & Decker tools. Every credential earned on those tools is a tradesperson entering the workforce with brand-specific equipment experience. The model is self-sufficient on earned revenue by Year Two. The retail tool store generates foot traffic and income before a single grant dollar arrives. The mentor program produces the mentors for the next cohort. The replication architecture is franchise-grade.
Frederick Trent Stanley started with a bolt in 1843. Robb Deignan started with a five-dollar toolbox at an estate sale. Both of them looked at a manufactured object and saw not a product but a system — a way to connect the person holding the tool to the work the tool was made for. Stanley Black & Decker has spent 180 years making the tools. CrowdSmith is building the room where the next generation of hands picks them up.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people. The list is ranked by proximity to the mission. Stanley Black & Decker holds rank fourteen. Among the other letters mailing this week: Snap-on, whose NC3 certification program delivers the stackable credentials CrowdSmith’s tracks are designed to incorporate. SawStop, whose Active Injury Mitigation technology will be the safety standard on Station Two. Harbor Freight, whose tools-for-education programs serve the same communities.
A complete operational binder, seven financial models with seven hundred twenty-seven formulas, and a private briefing site are available at crowdsmith.org/partners with the access code enclosed.
A bolt does not build anything. It holds things together. Frederick Trent Stanley did not build houses or bridges or machines. He made the component that kept them from falling apart. The company that grew from that component spent 180 years making every other component the builder needs — the drill, the saw, the level, the tape, the blade. An entire civilization of tools, descended from a single bolt in a Connecticut shop.
A five-dollar toolbox at an estate sale does not build anything either. But the man who bought it stood in his garage pulling out rusted tools one by one, cleaning each one, identifying each one, and discovering that the act of handling something built by someone else’s hands was the beginning of understanding what his own hands could do. That toolbox became a second toolbox. The second became a garage full. The garage full became a model for a building. The building became five stations. The five stations became 147 letters. And the letters are arriving this week at the desks of the people who make the tools that started the whole thing.
The bolt holds things together. The toolbox holds things together. CrowdSmith holds the person and the tool together — and what they build from that meeting is the point of everything Stanley Black & Decker has made since 1843.