Family Foundation · Inclusive Economies · Opportunity for Youth and Rest for Old Age
In 1917, John Emory Andrus wrote his own name backward and made it the name of a foundation. He had been a minister’s son, a schoolteacher, a chemical manufacturer, an investor, a mayor, and a four-term congressman. His wife Julia had been orphaned as a child. After she died, he built an orphanage on her adoptive family’s farm. His stated wish for the institution was plain: “opportunity for youth and rest for old age.” In the years between, he believed, people could take care of themselves. And ought to.
CrowdSmith exists in those years between. The five-station Maker Continuum is built for the people Andrus trusted to take care of themselves — and gives them the room, the tools, and the credential to do it. This letter is not a grant request. The Surdna Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals. This letter is a case study in what your Inclusive Economies pillar looks like when someone builds it from scratch in a federally designated Opportunity Zone.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
The Surdna Foundation holds rank #107 because its Inclusive Economies pillar — equitable economic development, quality jobs in communities of color, and support for diverse business ownership — maps directly to CrowdSmith’s operating thesis. Surdna does not accept unsolicited proposals. The ranking reflects the strength of the programmatic alignment and the Right Door position: this is a case study, not an application. The letter exists so that when Surdna’s program staff conduct their own research on workforce development innovation in Opportunity Zones, CrowdSmith appears in the room.
1917, Yonkers, New York. “Surdna” is “Andrus” spelled backward.
John Emory Andrus (1841–1934). Born in Pleasantville, New York, son of a Methodist minister. Graduated from Wesleyan University, 1862. Schoolteacher in New Jersey for four years. Founded the Arlington Chemical Company, manufacturing and distributing patent medicines worldwide. Investor in railroads, utilities, real estate, mining claims, and Standard Oil. Mayor of Yonkers. Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1905–1913 (four terms). Known as “the millionaire straphanger” because he commuted by train instead of private car. Married Julia Maria Dyckman, 1869. Nine children. Julia was orphaned as a child. After her death in 1909, Andrus established the Julia Dyckman Andrus Memorial orphanage on her adoptive family’s farm in Westchester County. In 1953, the John E. Andrus Memorial retirement home was built adjacent — completing his stated wish for “opportunity for youth and rest for old age.” Forty-five percent of his estate funded the foundation at his death.
$1 billion endowment. Approximately $54.7 million in annual grantmaking. 1,124 grants totaling $297.5 million between 2018 and 2024. Average grant size: $275,000. Sixty-four percent of grants unrestricted. Seventy-six percent multiyear. $230 million committed to impact investing since 2017, with 67% invested in diverse-owned firms, generating 12.4% annual returns. Fifth-generation family governance with over 380 descendants of John Emory Andrus. President: Don Chen.
Inclusive Economies: Fosters robust, sustainable economies and equitable economic development. Two sub-programs: Business Start-up and Growth (equitable access to capital, accelerators, and support networks for entrepreneurs of color) and Equitable Economic Development (community voice in economic policy, increasing quality jobs in communities of color).
Sustainable Environments: Climate justice, green economy, transportation and smart growth. Seeks to balance consumption and conservation with innovative solutions that improve lives.
Thriving Cultures: Invests in artists, culture-bearers, designers, and media-makers of color through three approaches: Create, Clarify, Connect. Guided by “Radical Imagination for Racial Justice” strategy.
Resilient Organizations Initiative: Capacity support for grantee partners including leadership development, financial resilience coaching, and fundraising coaching.
Invitation only. Surdna does not accept unsolicited letters of inquiry. Program staff build long-term relationships with people, organizations, communities, and movements working toward racial justice. These relationships can lead to an invitation to apply. The foundation also works through regranting partners and participatory grantmaking initiatives. Trust-based philanthropy model.
John Emory Andrus could have named the foundation after himself. He named it after himself in reverse — as if the institution’s purpose was to look back at where the man came from and build forward from the origin rather than the arrival. He started as a minister’s son in Pleasantville. He finished as a congressman with land holdings in six states. But the foundation he built at the end of his life didn’t fund the things that made him wealthy. It funded the things that were missing when he was young.
CrowdSmith’s founder followed the same trajectory in reverse. Robb Deignan developed forty-four invention concepts and could not afford a patent attorney. He built the system he wished had existed for him — a five-station facility that takes a person from a donated toolbox to a patent filing, with every station funded, credentialed, and staffed. The name of the foundation is not his name spelled backward. But the impulse is identical: build the thing that was missing at the beginning.
Surdna’s Inclusive Economies program centers on equitable economic development and the creation of quality jobs in communities of color. CrowdSmith’s facility is located in Census Tract 62400, a permanently designated Opportunity Zone in Tacoma’s East Portland Avenue corridor — a working neighborhood where the population that would benefit from a maker-continuum workforce facility already lives. The five credential tracks (Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems) produce five roles on an invention team. The retail tool store generates earned revenue from Day One. The WIOA-funded cohorts run through WorkForce Central. The facility is designed for self-sufficiency on earned revenue by Year Two and replication to three thousand locations nationally.
The alignment with Surdna’s evaluation priorities is structural: equitable access to tools, technology, and credentials in a community of color; quality job pathways in fabrication, AI literacy, and robotics; a business model that does not depend on philanthropy for survival; and an architecture designed to replicate rather than remain a single-site project.
| Dimension | Surdna Foundation | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Origin impulse | Andrus built the orphanage his wife never had | Robb built the system he wished had existed for his inventions |
| Economic inclusion | Inclusive Economies pillar: quality jobs, equitable development | Five credential tracks in an Opportunity Zone corridor |
| Community voice | Equitable Economic Development sub-program prioritizes community-driven decisions | Retail tool store as intake funnel — the community walks in before the program starts |
| Trust-based model | 64% unrestricted grants, 76% multiyear, relationship-first | Self-sufficient on earned revenue by Year Two — the building is not grant-dependent |
| Impact investing | $230M committed, 67% in diverse-owned firms | QOF-eligible facility in a permanent Opportunity Zone |
| Replication | 1,124 grants, national reach, participatory regranting | 3,000 locations nationally — the model, not just the building |
| Generational stewardship | Fifth generation of the Andrus family | Mentor program: each cohort produces the mentors for the next |
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. This letter is not a grant request. The Surdna Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals, and we respect that boundary. This letter is a case study in what your Inclusive Economies pillar looks like when someone builds it from scratch in a federally designated Opportunity Zone.
John Emory Andrus wrote his own name backward and made it the name of his foundation. He had been a schoolteacher, a manufacturer, an investor, a mayor, and a congressman. His wife had been orphaned as a child. After she died, he built an orphanage on her family’s farm and stated his wish plainly: opportunity for youth and rest for old age. In the years between, he believed people could take care of themselves. The foundation he built at the end of his life didn’t fund the things that made him wealthy. It funded the things that were missing when he was young.
The CrowdSmith Foundation exists in those years between. It is a five-station Maker Continuum in Census Tract 62400, Tacoma’s permanently 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.
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 could not afford a patent attorney. So he built the system he wished had existed for him — a facility that takes a person from a donated toolbox to a patent filing, with every station funded, credentialed, and staffed. 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.
Your Inclusive Economies program centers on equitable economic development and the creation of quality jobs in communities of color. CrowdSmith’s five credential tracks — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems — produce five roles on an invention team. Each role is a quality job. The facility is designed for self-sufficiency on earned revenue by Year Two and replication to three thousand locations nationally. The retail tool store generates revenue from opening day. WIOA-funded cohorts run through WorkForce Central. The building does not depend on philanthropy for survival. It depends on philanthropy for acceleration.
Your impact investing portfolio has committed $230 million with 67 percent invested in diverse-owned firms. CrowdSmith’s facility sits inside a Qualified Opportunity Fund–eligible location — the Opportunity Zone designation for Tract 62400 is now permanent under federal law. The building is an investable asset, not only a grantable one.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people. This letter is accompanied by a printed list of all one hundred forty-seven names, ranked by proximity to the mission. Your name appears alongside the Ford Foundation, which has spent a decade investing in inclusive economies at national scale; the Skoll Foundation, which funds social entrepreneurs at inflection points; and the MacArthur Foundation, whose fellowship program identifies individual builders working on systemic problems. All of those letters arrive the same week as yours. All of them describe the same building from a different threshold.
The building is at crowdsmith.org. Your profile page is live. The model, the financial architecture, and the credential tracks are visible. This letter exists so that when your program staff conduct their own research on workforce development innovation in Opportunity Zones, CrowdSmith is already in the room.
Andrus spelled his name backward because the purpose of the institution was to face the origin, not the arrival. CrowdSmith was built by a man who faced his own origin — the sixteen-year-old who had no shop, no mentor, no institution — and constructed the building that should have been there. We believe the alignment is worth your attention.
He could have called it the Andrus Foundation. He spelled it backward instead. As if the purpose of the institution was not to carry his name forward but to face the direction he came from — the minister’s house in Pleasantville, the schoolroom in New Jersey, the wife who had no family of her own until she married into his.
The orphanage he built on her family’s farm was not named after him. It was named after her. The retirement home built later, adjacent, was named after him — but only because it completed the sentence he had started. Opportunity for youth. Rest for old age. In the years between, people take care of themselves.
The foundation that carries his name in reverse has spent five generations and a billion dollars building the infrastructure for those years between. CrowdSmith is one building in one corridor for the same population — people who can take care of themselves, and will, the moment someone gives them the room.