Most scholarship funds operate on a single template. One check, one set of eligibility rules, one application form sent to every campus on the list. The money moves, the criteria stay fixed, and the donor rarely sets foot on the ground.
Jean-Pierre Conte built something that behaves differently at each school it touches. The Conte First Generation Fund reaches 11 campuses. Rather than imposing one rigid structure across all of them, it changes shape depending on where the gaps actually sit. That design choice mirrors how its founder, managing partner of a San Francisco middle-market private equity firm, approaches the problem of first-generation students.
The Site-Visit Method
Each partnership begins with a campus visit. Conte conducts a direct interview with university leadership and reads, candidly, where a school’s existing programming falls short.
That groundwork sets the fund apart from arrangements built on a single grant agreement. A school strong on financial aid but thin on mentorship needs something different from one with the reverse problem. JP Conte uses the visit to find out which it is before any money is committed.
The interviews also give him a sense of whether a school can actually deliver. Administrators who can name their weak points tend to use new funding well. Those who can’t often let it scatter. He weighs that read alongside the programmatic gaps.
Eleven Shapes of Support
What follows is one program shaped 11 different ways. Scholarships, mentorship structures, and student resources vary by institution, calibrated to what each place already does well and where it needs reinforcement.
That list includes his alma maters, Colgate and Harvard, where his own history gives him a clear read on the experience. For J-P Conte, the point is to match the form of support to the specific shortfall. He’d rather do that than fund the same package everywhere and hope it lands.
The Personal Root
The fund traces back to Conte’s own path. He was the first in his family to earn a degree, a fact that shapes how he weighs the obstacles first-generation students face after they arrive on campus.
He named the effort in honor of his parents. That dedication ties the program’s mechanics, from the visits to the interviews to the institution-by-institution shaping of resources, to a personal account of what it took to finish and what might have made the climb less steep.
