Forget the gala, these Silicon Valley schools run their own venture capital funds

Most American private schools still raise money the old-fashioned way—silent auctions, annual giving, and a yearly gala with mixed drinks and canapés.  

Crystal Springs Uplands School, a 569-student private day school located on the peninsula between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, still plans to throw a gala this year, but it isn’t the main draw for raising money. The fundraising, increasingly, comes from somewhere else. 

Crystal Springs is one of a small but growing number of Silicon Valley private schools that have built what amount to miniature venture capital funds. The funds are capitalized with donations from the school community, guided and overseen by parent-investors from well-connected firms such as Lightspeed, Notable Capital, and Sequoia, and are aimed at early-stage, pre-IPO companies. 

The approach was originated by Saint Francis High School in Mountain View, where a $15,000 pre-IPO investment in Snap returned $34 million when Snap went public in 2017. Nearly a decade later, with the ...