The E.L. Craig Foundation is one of two private grantmaking foundations created from the fortune of TAMKO Building Products founder and manufacturing entrepreneur E.L. Craig. It is headed by E.L. Craig’s daughter, Ethelmae C. Humphreys, and supports right-leaning public policy organizations.
Background
E.L. Craig created the company now known as TAMKO Building Products in 1944. The E.L. Craig Foundation is headed by his daughter, Ethelmae C. Humphreys, and run by a board headed by Humphreys and including her children and grandchildren. 1
Leadership
Ethelmae C. Humphreys has served on the boards of the libertarian think tank Cato Institute and the Show-Me Institute, a right-leaning public policy group in Missouri. Both Ethelmae Humphreys and her children, David Humphreys and Sarah Atkins, have been active in conservative and Republican politics. In 2009, Ethelmae Humphreys was the largest contributor to a successful drive instituted by the American Legislative Exchange Council to alter the Missouri state constitution to prohibit the state from imposing a requirement to purchase health insurance if the national mandate requiring such purchases was declared unconstitutional. 2
Opposition to Organized Labor
In 2011, David Humphreys and Sarah Atkins donated $500,000 to the successful effort to prevent then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) from being recalled over his restrictions on government worker unions. 3
In 2013, the Teamsters Union denounced Ethelmae Humphreys and her children as “the family of greedy billionaires behind today’s attacks on workers in Missouri” because of their contributions to Republican candidates in Missouri and to the Mackinac Center, a right-leaning public policy organization in Michigan. 4
In 2018, David Humphreys donated $850,000 to Club for Growth Action Missouri to support the U.S. Senate campaign of then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley (R). 5
Grantmaking
Except for a grant to the American Red Cross and a grant to the Joplin Regional Medical School Alliance, all E.L. Craig Foundation grantmaking in 2018 went to center-right public policy organizations. The largest grants the foundation made in 2018 were $400,000 to the Institute for Humane Studies and three $250,000 grants to the Acton Institute, Cato Institute, and Federalist Society. 6
References
- For a profile of Ethelmae Humphreys, see Melissa Dunston, “Born Into Business: Ethelmae Humphreys Is 70-Year ‘Matriarch’ of Roofing Industry, Joplin Globe, April 29, 2018, https://www.joplinglobe.com/news/lifestyles/born-into-business-ethelmae-humphreys-is-70-year-matriarch-of-roofing-industry/article_616c55bf-e558-50c0-baa6-593d1b06cff3.html (accessed November 3, 2020)
- Nicholas Kusnetz, “The Assault on Healthcare Reform,” The Nation, October 25, 2010.
- Ruth Conniff and Matthew Rothschild, “What’s At Stake in Wisconsin,” The Progressive, June 2012.
- “Meet Missouri’s Greedy Billionaires Trying To Wipe Out The Middle Class,” Teamsters Nation Blog, February 27, 2013, http://teamsternation.blogspot.com/2013/02/meet-missouris-greedy-billionaires.html (accessed November 4, 2020).
- Bill Allison and John McCormick, “Musk Among the Millionaires and Billionaires Funding Midterms,” Bloomberg, July 16, 2018.
- E.L. Craig Foundation, Return of a Private Foundation (Form 990-PF), 2018, Attachment 9 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/446015127/06_2019_prefixes_39-45%2F446015127_201812_990PF_2019061816422025