Most scholarship funds operate at a single institution. A donor gives, the university administers, and students apply through whatever process the school has built. Jean-Pierre Conte took a different approach. When he set out to support first-generation college students — those whose parents have not earned a four-year degree — he built a fund now operating across 11 universities, including his alma mater, Colgate University, and Harvard. Each partnership began with a site visit, a direct interview with university leadership, and a candid assessment of whether the school had the infrastructure to actually deliver on its commitments to this student population.
That selection process sets the Conte First Generation Fund apart from most philanthropically funded scholarship programs. Jean-Pierre Conte, managing partner of his family office, Lupine Crest Capital, was not simply directing resources toward institutions with strong brand recognition. He was evaluating each university’s capacity to support first-generation students before making any commitment.
“I interviewed each school, visited each school, and learned that some of the schools were really good at it — good at providing resources, attracting that talent, and even mentoring that talent while they were at school,” Conte has said. “So they had the resources and the focus to do it. And other schools didn’t. They were either too small, didn’t have the resources, or both, and sometimes schools didn’t have the talent or the conviction to do it.”
The fund provides scholarships, mentorship, and support resources, with the specific shape of that support varying by institution depending on what each school already does well and where its programming has gaps.
Why Does the Multi-University Model Matter for First-Generation Students?
The scale of the first-generation student challenge in the United States helps explain why a multi-institution approach carries more weight than a single-campus commitment. According to FirstGen Forward, there are 8.2 million first-generation undergraduate students in the country, making up 54 percent of all undergraduates. First-generation students complete degrees at a rate of 24 percent, while continuing-generation students — those with at least one college-educated parent — complete at 59 percent. Closing that gap would produce 4.4 million additional graduates and generate an estimated $700 billion in net economic benefit.
No single university partnership addresses a problem at that scale. By anchoring the fund at 11 institutions, Jean-Pierre Conte built a model that simultaneously supports students across different types of schools — large research universities, smaller liberal arts colleges, institutions with deep existing first-generation programming, and schools that were earlier in building that infrastructure. The diversity of institutional contexts also generates practical knowledge: what works at one university informs how support is structured at another.
Conte’s own experience at Colgate shaped how he thinks about what first-generation students actually need. “When I was at Colgate, less than 5 percent of the population were first-gen students like me,” he has said. “I want to make sure those students are starting off from a place where they will succeed.”
How Does Each University Tailor Support for First-Generation Students?
The fund’s structure is not uniform across all 11 universities, and that variation is intentional. Conte’s selection process identified schools with meaningful first-generation programming already in place — institutions that could put additional resources to work effectively rather than build infrastructure from scratch with donated funds. The shape of support at Colgate differs from the shape of support at Harvard, and both differ from what the fund provides at the nine additional universities in the network.
At Colgate, the connection runs deepest. Conte graduated from the Hamilton, New York campus in 1985 as a first-generation student himself. His broader commitment to Colgate has since extended beyond the fund: in 2025, he made a $25 million gift to fund a new social center, one of the largest individual donations in the university’s history.
“It’s about closing the information gap and giving students the tools they need to succeed,” Conte has said of the fund’s purpose.
For the nine additional universities in the network, Conte’s criteria held consistently: demonstrated capacity to support first-generation students, existing programming that additional resources could strengthen, and institutional leadership with genuine commitment to this population.
What Jean-Pierre Conte’s Approach Reveals About Effective Educational Philanthropy
The methodology behind the Conte First Generation Fund offers a clear window into how Jean-Pierre Conte approaches philanthropic investment. Financial aid addresses one dimension of the first-generation completion gap. Personal, professional, and institutional support address several others. The fund was built on the premise that scholarships without surrounding infrastructure produce weaker outcomes than scholarships embedded in programs with the capacity to deliver consistent support.
“A light went off, and I came to the conclusion that I need to start sooner, in high school or earlier, to really help change the trajectory,” Conte has said, describing how his thinking about first-generation support extended beyond the university years. That led him to partner with pre-college organizations including Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and 10,000 Degrees in San Francisco, which engage students early on in their educational journey.
The 11-university fund and the pre-college partnerships function as complementary parts of the same commitment. Students who arrive at college with mentorship and preparation behind them are better positioned to use the resources the fund provides at the university level.
Most privately funded scholarship programs are transactional — a donor contributes capital, a university selects recipients, and the relationship ends there. The Conte First Generation Fund operates differently because it was built around hands-on involvement, active assessment, and sustained engagement with how each university partner performs. When Conte helped install new leadership at Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, the organization expanded its Bay Area reach substantially. “We multiplied the number of students served in the Bay Area by five to seven times,” he noted of that outcome.
For first-generation students at 11 universities, the Conte First Generation Fund is a scholarship and mentorship program designed by someone who navigated those same challenges and understood, from experience, exactly where the support structure needed to be strongest.
