Some Silicon Valley private schools are moving past auctions, annual giving campaigns, and fundraising dinners. According to Fortune, Crystal Springs Uplands School, Saint Francis High School, and Menlo School have set up different forms of venture-style investment funds that bring parent and alumni investing networks into school finance.
The standout example came from Saint Francis. The school invested $15,000 in Snap before the company went public, and that stake eventually produced a return of more than 2,000x, or about $34 million.
Crystal Springs built a growth fund with support from parents and alumni
Crystal Springs Uplands School operates its middle school in Belmont and its high school in Hillsborough. It is one of the better-known private schools on the San Francisco Peninsula. The school has about 569 students, and tuition for the 2026-2027 academic year is $68,600.
Fortune reported that the school has established the Crystal Growth Fund. The capital does not come from student tuition or from money set aside for day-to-day operations. Instead, parents and alumni contribute separate donations, while school community members with investment experience help source opportunities in private companies.
Participants include people tied to Lightspeed Venture Partners, Notable Capital, and Sequoia Capital. In some cases, parents working at venture firms have been able to share a small portion of investment allocation they already had access to, allowing the school to join those deals.
As of fiscal 2023, Crystal Springs’ public disclosures did not show private market investments. By June 2025, about $1.75 million of the school’s roughly $61.1 million investment portfolio had been placed in private equity. The amount is still small relative to the full portfolio, but it shows that the school has entered the private investment market.
Saint Francis turned a $15,000 Snap investment into about $34 million
The best-known version of this model appeared earlier at Saint Francis High School in Mountain View. The school set up its growth fund in the 1990s, starting with about $250,000 supplied by two parents who worked in venture capital. Parents and alumni with technology startup experience then helped identify investment opportunities.
In 2012, Barry Eggers, a founding partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, noticed that his child and classmates were using Snapchat heavily while the app was still relatively new. Lightspeed later became one of Snapchat’s early investors, and Eggers also arranged for Saint Francis’ growth fund to invest $15,000.
Five years later, Snap went public. Saint Francis says in its official materials that, based on selling the entire position at the IPO price, that $15,000 investment generated more than 2,000x in returns, or about $34 million.
The proceeds were later used to expand tuition assistance for students, build a new innovation center, and provide bonuses for faculty and staff.
Fortune said the Saint Francis fund now invests in about 10 companies a year, with check sizes of roughly $25,000 to $50,000 each. Eggers estimated that cumulative returns since the fund’s creation are close to $50 million.
The report also noted that Snap was an unusually successful case and should not be treated as evidence that any startup investment can produce a 2,000x outcome.
Menlo has a similar structure, while public records do not establish an equivalent fund at Nueva
Menlo School in Atherton has also built a related program. According to the latest public information cited in the report, Menlo’s venture-oriented school fund holds about 36 venture fund and early-company investments with a total value of less than $1 million.
That remains a very small slice of Menlo’s broader endowment, which stood at about $118.4 million as of June 2025.
The school’s investment oversight group includes people from Bessemer Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners, and Sobrato Capital.
The Nueva School, also located on the Peninsula, has sizable assets and a professional investment management structure, and people with finance and venture backgrounds are involved in school-related work. Still, the available public records do not show that Nueva has set up a separate venture fund that directly invests in private companies in the same way as Saint Francis or Crystal Springs. The schools therefore should not be treated as identical cases.
From ordinary fundraising to turning parent networks into institutional assets
The report contrasted this model with more conventional school fundraising. The National PTA lists direct donations, events, grants, and product sales among common methods. Events can include fun runs, cycling events, auctions, and food sales, while products may include clothing, souvenirs, and holiday items. Fortune also described most U.S. private schools as still relying on annual giving, auctions, and once-a-year fundraising dinners.
That is what makes the Crystal Springs and Saint Francis approach look distinctly Silicon Valley. For a typical school, a $10,000 donation simply means $10,000 more for educational spending. But if a parent works at a top venture firm, that parent may be able to offer something different: access to an investment opportunity the school would otherwise never see.
The report pointed out that even someone with $1 million may not be able to invest in a highly sought-after early-stage technology company. Many of the strongest startups are not short of capital, and outsiders may not even know they are raising money. Venture investors operate inside that network every day.
At Saint Francis, members of the investment committee do not charge management fees and do not share in investment profits. The school is also a nonprofit institution, giving its investment income a tax structure different from that of a standard venture capital fund.
In that setup, better-resourced schools can first gather more donations, then use parent expertise to grow part of that capital, and later recycle the gains into tuition aid, teacher compensation, courses, and campus projects. Those resources can then attract more families, alumni, and professionals into the same community.
The headline figure of turning $15,000 into about $34 million is the eye-catching part. The larger development in Fortune’s report is that some elite Silicon Valley schools are converting parent networks and investing expertise into long-term assets that can accumulate over time.