Our Shared Impact in 2025

Dear Partners,

We hope that the holiday season was enjoyable for you and your families and that 2026 is off to a great start!

As we reflect on the past year and look forward through 2026, we are reminded of the profound responsibility and privilege we share in advancing The Sobrato Organization’s (TSO) mission to build a more equitable and sustainable world through business and philanthropic leadership. We are deeply grateful for the critical role you play in advancing our mission by delivering strong investment results in an ever-changing and complex investment environment. TSO’s impact simply wouldn’t be possible without your partnership. On behalf of the Sobrato Capital team, I wanted to share just a few of the many milestones our broader organization achieved in 2025.

At TSO, we are delivering on our promise to make strategic, long-term investments in four critical issue areas pertinent to our local community, nation, and world: economic mobility, educational equity, housing security, and climate action. In 2025, we deployed $181 million in grants and impact investments across these core areas. Recognizing the indelible role Silicon Valley has played in TSO’s success, we responded with a deep commitment to our local community, particularly through supporting low-wage and housing insecure residents and families who may not share in the wider success of the region. We are proud that TSO was yet again named the Top Corporate Philanthropist in Silicon Valley. However, as John A. Sobrato (TSO’s founder and chairman emeritus) is quick to say, we look forward to the day when our deeper-pocketed corporate neighbors top this list.

One example of our commitment to educational equity and economic mobility is a large grant we provided to Spartan East Side Promise, a San Jose State University (the #5 public university in the U.S.) program. This program supports underrepresented students across lower-income pockets of Silicon Valley –  students who have long faced financial, geographic, and systemic barriers to college. It guides students beginning in the ninth grade on every stage of their college journey – from exploration and application to graduation and career preparation. TSO’s grant provides critical dollars to expand the program’s educational pathways and geographic reach to support hundreds of students each year, not only expanding access but also breaking cycles of intergenerational poverty in our backyard.

We are especially proud of the meaningful progress we made with our Housing Security Initiative (HSI) in 2025. HSI is a bold, cross-organization effort supported by our Sobrato Philanthropies, Real Estate, and Capital teams. Housing insecurity is one of the greatest challenges facing Silicon Valley, with the region lacking 118,000+ housing units affordable for lower-income residents. Our strategy targets housing preservation, production, and pro-housing policy. In 2025, we anchored a consortium that provided $50 million in additional funding to the Bay Area Housing Innovation Fund (BAHIF), bringing the total fund to $100 million. With this expansion, the Fund is projected to unlock more than 1,000 affordable homes over the next two years. 1633 Valencia, the first BAHIF-backed project, completed construction in December, providing 145 homes to formerly homeless seniors in San Francisco. BAHIF is a first-of-its-kind vehicle we believe can serve as a model for other regions around the United States, demonstrating that our region can deliver units faster, and more affordably.

In 2025, the communities we serve were deeply impacted by federal cuts to programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and non-profits providing essential services. The benefit of stewarding capital for living donors really shone through this past year, and we were proud of how quickly the Sobrato family and our leadership team mobilized to address critical funding gaps. We approved $10 million in special responsive grants to meet the moment. One example is our championing of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Community Lifeline Fund (SVCF), which has deployed critical resources to local nonprofits that provide access to food, health and legal services, and shelter to those most in need. The fund also supports the resiliency of Silicon Valley’s non-profit organizations.

While we will always be deeply committed to our local region, TSO also has impact at the national and global scale. One area where TSO has broad geographic reach is our growing impact investment portfolio, where we made $95M in new commitments in 2025, bringing cumulative active commitments to $600 million. We have become a scaled financial partner to leading financial inclusion-focused groups – organizations like One Acre Fund and MCE Social Capital, and those addressing urgent humanitarian crises – such as UNICEF USA – as well as partners working in climate, housing, education, and beyond. In the wake of rescission of billions of dollars in global aid funding and support for climate initiatives this year, our responsive impact investments felt even more urgent.

As we step into 2026, we are committed to deepening our partnership with the goal of advancing TSO’s mission to pursue lasting, positive change through business and philanthropic leadership. The achievements of the past year are a direct result of your investment success. We greatly enjoyed our many conversations throughout the year and can’t thank you enough for the transparency you bring in sharing what’s top of mind for you. We look forward to continuing these conversations in 2026.

On behalf of the entire Sobrato Capital team, we wish you a happy, healthy, and productive 2026.

With appreciation,

Christy Richardson
Chief Investment Officer
The Sobrato Organization