Community Vitality

As a community-owned, not-for-profit utility, customers and community remain at the heart of all we do. We’re proud of our strong 97% overall customer satisfaction rating in 2025.

We greatly expanded our grassroots outreach in support of the most vulnerable in our community, working with partners to provide wraparound services and meeting our customers where they’re at. By extending our Lobby Days events to 3 days per month, we were able to provide more enrollment opportunities for customers. During the events, we had over 880 interactions with our Energy Assistance Program Rate (EAPR) and Medical Equipment Discount (MED Rate) customers and gained 750+ enrollments.

We increased customer advocacy efforts by conducting 100+ presentations/pop-up events, interacting with over 5,300 customers. We hosted 3 Neighborhood Walks where team members had 150+ in-person interactions with customers to talk about electrification and other SMUD programs. Additionally, we hosted 2 Connecting our Communities events, with over 400 attendees and 30+ vendors.

22 local nonprofit organizations received $580,000 in Shine program funding for their projects in 2025, reaching more than 83,000 customers.

Our employees participated in 80 volunteer events throughout our community, resulting in over 4,000 hours of volunteer service and pledged over $500,000 of their own funds to local nonprofits during the month-long SMUD Cares employee giving campaign.

Giving Fridays with the California State Fair collected 35,501 pounds of food for the Sacramento Food Bank.

Our Giving Fridays partnership with the California State Fair collected 35,501 pounds of food for the Sacramento Food Bank — an 87% increase from 2024 donations. These contributions will provide more than 29,000 meals for families in our region.

Our Community Impact Plan is designed to bring the community along with us in our journey to a clean energy future, supporting energy efficiency efforts and/or electrification work at over 22 businesses and 346 homes. We reached over 300,000 customers through community partnerships.

Placing significant focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, we engaged with youth and educators throughout the year. Key accomplishments include reaching over 22,000 students through 15 regional STEM and SMUD hosted events, 200 classroom visits and community presentations and our first-ever Education Summit engaging our region’s top educational professionals in our 2030 Zero Carbon Plan.

Supporting our community means showing up to more than 1,600 community events through sponsorships, booths, speaking opportunities and more. It also looks like offering more than 60 programs and services through a wide range of marketing tactics and translating materials and messages in more than 20 different languages.

Our new Solar & Storage for Nonprofits program began with 2 installations in 2025: LifeSTEPS and Children’s Choice for Hearing and Talking. Because of this program, these nonprofits can now access clean, affordable solar energy without the expense and infrastructure of having solar installed at their physical location.

Our We Power Business marketing campaign highlighted our work with local business owners.

We completed our Meadowview Electrification Project, during which 250+ homes received energy efficiency, electrification and/or weatherization installations. Also, we piloted a new low-/moderate-income energy saver bundle pilot for customers that typically exceed the income thresholds for our Energy Assistance Program Rate (EAPR).

Our We Power Business marketing campaign meant multi-channel, multi-language communications to showcase the value we bring to the business community - low rates, reliable service and clean power along with personalized service from our strategic account advisors. To further support the local business community, we provided resources to business customers and Supplier Education and Economic Development (SEED) small business vendors, increasing our SEED vendor base to a total of more than 900.

We kept our focus on removing carbon emissions and bringing our community along, planting more than 11,000 shade trees in the process. SMUD continues to be a trusted leader in promoting the success of our region, attracting and retaining businesses, growing our customer base and supporting the economic vitality of our communities.