Summary
What do they do? The current EIN is 82-4415931. Official history dates the initiative to 2015; IRS exemption dates to 2019. Isabel Arjmand named it in personal giving in 2019, not as a GiveWell recommendation. Historical fiscal-sponsor payment details are not reconstructed or assigned to today’s EIN. More
Why this approach interests us
- Four East Bay emergency hubs could supply support when ordinary alternatives fail. That is a concrete local pathway, not a claim that land or cultural participation automatically produces clinical gains.
Our main reservations
- No hub activation, unique emergency-user or health-outcome denominator is reported. The favorable 15% scenario supplies about 99% of modeled expected health. Substantial land and cash assets complicate donor additionality.
What do you get for your dollar?
The locked readiness-only scenario average is about $1.17 billion per 10 Bay QALYs, using $2,841,731 annual organizational expense. This is a fragile analyst-prior diagnostic, not measured health impact or a complete return on rematriation. Inspect the model and scenarios.
- whole annual expense
- $2,841,731 — FY2024 functional expense; no separate event, gaming or inventory cost addbacks reported. Capital acquisition is not fully captured by annual expense.
- current source anchor
- Four East Bay hubs — Official undated Himmetka page accessed September 11, 2026; not four measured annual emergency cohorts.
- bay health diagnostic
- About $1.17B / 10 QALYs — Central about $59.2B; favorable about $177.6M. None of the selected worlds passes $1M. Subjective worlds are not empirical confidence intervals.
1. What do they do?
The current EIN is 82-4415931. Official history dates the initiative to 2015; IRS exemption dates to 2019. Isabel Arjmand named it in personal giving in 2019, not as a GiveWell recommendation. Historical fiscal-sponsor payment details are not reconstructed or assigned to today’s EIN.
Maintain local readiness
The official page now describes four hubs on rematriated East Bay land. A 2024 participant account described water catchment, filtration, storage, supplies and gardens at the first hub; it does not verify identical equipment or capacity at every current hub.
Reach otherwise unsupported people
The model requires an actual disruption, accessible unique people and absence of an effective public, personal or community alternative.
Avert finite health loss
Severe-episode risk reduction and utility-duration are explicit judgments. No reported rescues, lives saved, clinical treatment or measured QALY improvement is claimed.
Scope of this review. Whole organizational annual expense is charged to one partial readiness pathway. Land return, cultural revitalization, food growing, grants, ecological restoration and most education remain unquantified, not zero-valued. No recurring new youth cohort is credited: the youth page describes a last wave in summer 2025 and transition to internships for previous participants.
2. Monitoring and information sharing
Current EIN 82-4415931; East Bay initiative
Official history plus original legal filing. 2015 initiative founding; 2019 exemption; FY2024 filing signed November 14, 2025.
Our assessment. Do not confuse incorporation with the first historical staff gift or claim precise sponsor payment continuity.
Four East Bay hubs
Official program description. Current page states four; earlier 2024 account described first-hub supplies and additional sites.
Our assessment. No emergency activation, health outcome or unique-user count. Equipment at the first site does not establish all-site capability.
Whole organization FY2024
Original Form 990 Parts III, VIII, IX and X. $2,841,731 expense; $2,189,923 total program expense; seven tended land sites, workshops and youth-program launch.
Our assessment. Program expense is not a Himmetka-only budget. Sites and workshops are not QALYs; asset growth is not an annual operating expense.
Potential emergency users, not an observed patient cohort
No direct clinical or controlled outcome evidence located in this bounded pass. Health ARR, utility and duration remain assumptions.
Our assessment. No generic Indigenous identity, cultural healing statement, garden attendance or emergency preparedness recommendation is converted into measured QALYs.
3. Qualitative assessment
Four East Bay emergency hubs could supply support when ordinary alternatives fail. That is a concrete local pathway, not a claim that land or cultural participation automatically produces clinical gains.
Key reservations
- The original accounting denominator is verified, but full resource cost is incomplete: capitalized land cannot be ignored when claiming complete societal cost-effectiveness.
- One annual cohort does not value durable future readiness; crediting future years requires a maintenance, replacement and funded-baseline model.
- Substantial reserves do not prove zero marginal value, but a general donation request does not prove cash-binding expansion.
- The model is partial and very prior-sensitive; it is unsuitable as a precise rank or favorable donor recommendation.
Benefits not included in our estimate
- Indigenous sovereignty, land return, cultural continuity and justice are not assigned invented clinical utilities.
- Ecology, food production, language learning and possible longer-term psychosocial benefits remain unquantified.
- No youth enrollment, reduced suicide, prevented wildfire death or housing outcome is inferred from mission language.
4. What do you get for your dollar?
A signed, finite readiness prior—not a whole-portfolio health valuation
One annual readiness cohort; no permanent infrastructure multiplier, no repeated-event counting and no lifelong communal utility. The first locked result is retained without threshold tuning.
A better life is our comparison unit of 10 additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), potentially spread across people. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.
How we calculate the estimate
Bay QALYs per dollar: 4 hubs × unique people/hub × annual disruption probability × otherwise-unsupported fraction × severe-episode ARR × utility × finite years × donor response ÷ whole annual expense
8.528604572353966e-9 Bay QALYs per dollar; 0.000008528604572353965 per $1,000
Model inputs and assumptions
- Whole expense
- $2,841,731 FY2024 (range: Capital and complementary resources additional/unknown). Original Form 990. Net property rose from $5,425,171 to $32,531,991; this change is not itself a verified cash purchase total and is not annualized without asset-life evidence. Source anchored, incomplete societal resources.
- Accessible unique people and disruption
- 100 per hub × 5% annual disruption probability (range: 50–250 people; 5%–10% in signed worlds). No reported users. People across hubs must be deduplicated; a person can appear only once in this annual modeled cohort. Capacities are not observed attendance. Analyst judgment.
- Otherwise unsupported
- 20% (range: 20%–40%). Includes practical activation and remaining gap after public emergency services, households and other community resources. No municipal service failure is asserted. Analyst judgment.
- Finite health improvement
- 0.003 ARR × 0.20 utility × 1 year (range: Signed ARR −0.002 to +0.01; utility 0.20–0.50; duration 0.25–2 years). No clinical trial transfer claimed. Finite morbidity-equivalent episodes, not inferred deaths or cultural utility. Harm scenario is hypothetical. Unvalidated analyst judgment.
- Ordinary-gift response
- 20% (range: 0%–40%). Joint readiness allocation, additional cash response and other-funder displacement. Existing funded readiness is baseline. Do not add a separate portfolio fraction or assume a restricted hub donation. Analyst judgment.
- Subjective world weights
- 10% harm / 25% null / 50% central / 15% favorable (range: Not statistical probabilities). Bay share is 100% only for the selected East Bay cohort. Correlated favorable assumptions are bundled and dominate expectation. Judgment before first output.
Illustrative $1,000 ordinary gift; no linear large-gift capacity assurance
- harm: No positive modeled return. Weight 0.1; -0.00004 annual budget-equivalent Bay QALYs. These are subjective readiness scenarios.
- null: No positive modeled return. Weight 0.25; 0 annual budget-equivalent Bay QALYs. These are subjective readiness scenarios.
- central: $59,202,729,167 / 10 Bay QALYs. Weight 0.5; 0.00048000000000000007 annual budget-equivalent Bay QALYs. These are subjective readiness scenarios.
- favorable: $177,608,187 / 10 Bay QALYs. Weight 0.15; 0.16000000000000003 annual budget-equivalent Bay QALYs. These are subjective readiness scenarios.
Uncertainty. Four hubs are observed; every health conversion and gift-response input is unmeasured. The arithmetic is reproducible but cannot establish a calibrated probability of beating a threshold. Missing broader health pathways could matter in either direction.
5. Funding and previous grants
HOLD giving on health grounds: no priced additional readiness capacity and no measured emergency outcome bridge. The human-health model excludes most of the mission; an unfavorable partial result does not establish low cultural or justice value.
FY2024 revenue $12,536,415; net assets $54,252,353, including $52,700,247 without donor restrictions. Cash plus temporary cash investments totaled $19,990,861; unrestricted net assets are not all spendable cash. Government grants $1,500,000 and government-contract revenue $42,584 are baseline. A later $843,875 Measure DD watershed-acquisition proposal is not a verified marginal hub offer. Annual expense excludes much land-capital deployment; volunteer, donated and public complements remain incomplete. Donor response is not verified by a general fundraising page.
This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.
We have not verified a suitable donation route for this reviewed activity. Confirm the legal recipient and intended allocation before donating.
6. Sources
- FY2024 Form 990. Sogorea Te Land Trust / IRS. Original filing. Published: Signed 2025-11-14; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Himmetka: In One Place, Together. Sogorea Te Land Trust. Official program page. Published: Undated; accessed 2026-09-11; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Mitiini Numma Youth Program. Sogorea Te Land Trust. Official program page. Published: Undated; describes summer 2025 transition; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Our History. Sogorea Te Land Trust. Official history. Published: Undated; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Staff members’ personal donations for giving season 2019 — Isabel Arjmand. GiveWell Blog. Historical staff statement. Published: 2019-12-10; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Rematriating Rinihmu Pulte’irekne. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Government partner case study. Published: January 2025 author date; February URL directory; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Recycling Update 2024 detailed program, page 14. Northern California Recycling Association / Sogorea Te presenter. Primary participant program. Published: 2024-03-11 event; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Measure DD grant proposal, file 26-0298. City of Oakland. Public funding proposal; not proof of disbursement. Published: Created 2025-12-10; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
Annual expenses: years and sources
Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $2,270,919. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.
Sogorea Te Land Trust
Form 990/990-EZ reported whole-entity expenses; includes program, administration and fundraising costs, but excludes any costs netted against revenue.
Latest original return and prior-year comparative combined with earlier filing data.