Writing a check is the easiest form of corporate philanthropy, and according to JP Conte, it’s often the least effective one when the goal is helping first-generation college students actually graduate. In a Forbes Business Council column, Conte, founder and managing partner of his family office, Lupine Crest Capital, argues that direct, personal engagement does something a donation alone can’t: it exposes students to professional pathways and expectations they might not otherwise encounter.
Conte’s own history shapes this view. As a first-generation student himself, he has described how much of what helped him succeed came from information and relationships rather than money alone. That perspective runs through his argument that businesses have something to offer beyond funding, namely the professional networks and hands-on guidance that mentorship provides.
What Mentorship Actually Solves
The value of direct engagement, in Conte’s telling, is that it closes the same information gap that separates first-generation students from their peers. A mentor can explain how to navigate a corporate internship search, how to interpret a job offer, or how to build a resume that reads clearly to a hiring manager. A scholarship check cannot do any of that on its own.
He connects this to broader completion data, noting that only 24% of first-generation students graduate within six years nationally, a rate he attributes partly to the absence of exactly this kind of guidance rather than a lack of ability.
What a Mentor Can Do That a Committee Cannot
Corporate giving programs are usually run by committees deciding where a fixed pool of money should go each year. Mentorship, by contrast, is personal and direct, and Conte argues that difference is exactly why it works on a problem defined by missing information rather than missing funds. A single employee willing to answer a student’s questions about a job offer or a resume can close a specific gap that a general scholarship fund, however well managed, was never designed to address.
A Role for Business Leaders Specifically
Conte’s argument is aimed squarely at business leaders rather than educators, on the theory that professionals already have the workplace knowledge that students need and simply haven’t been asked to share it. He has supported this kind of engagement through organizations including 10,000 Degrees and SEO San Francisco.
Making the Case to Skeptical Executives
Conte anticipates the objection that mentorship takes more time than a company can easily spare, and answers it by pointing out that the time commitment scales with the size of the effort. A single mentor working with a handful of students requires far less institutional investment than a scholarship fund, yet Conte argues it can produce a comparable or greater effect on whether a specific student finishes their degree, precisely because it targets the information gap directly rather than the cost of tuition.
More of Conte’s writing on education and mentorship can be found through his Forbes Business Council profile and LinkedIn, both linked below.
