Hispanic Scholarship Fund

The Hispanic Scholarship Fund is a national nonprofit built around a single, stubborn number: not how many Latino students start college, but how many finish. Founded in 1975, it empowers Latino families with the knowledge and resources to complete a higher education, then backs that with scholarships and a set of free support services that follow a student from application to first job.

The money is real - awards run from $500 to $5,000, and roughly 10,000 Scholars are selected each year - but HSF treats the check as a starting point rather than a finish line. Once selected, a Scholar can get help choosing a university, decoding financial aid, finding internships, and, through HSF's employer partnerships, getting placed in a job. Through 2022, the organization had distributed more than $700 million to Latino students.

That whole-journey approach is the point. HSF serves over 40,000 people a year - and many of them are not the students themselves, but parents, siblings and alumni. The logic is simple: if you want a first-generation student to graduate, you educate the entire family about what college takes.

Access to college has never been HSF's hardest problem - completion is. Its programs are aimed squarely at the second number: keeping students enrolled, funded, mentored and pointed toward a career until they graduate and get hired.

HSF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Its funding comes from corporate partnerships and sponsorships, foundation grants, major individual gifts and fundraising campaigns - money that flows back out as scholarships and free programs. The reported annual revenue is roughly $82 million, run by a lean team of about 85 people.

The corporate side has a second logic beyond generosity: partners such as Coca-Cola, Lowe's and Wells Fargo don't only fund Scholars - they hire them. Philanthropy and talent pipeline run through the same program. Coca-Cola's relationship with HSF stretches back to the early 1980s; Lowe's extended a 15-year partnership; and in 2025 MacKenzie Scott added a $70 million gift, among the largest in HSF's history.

HSF has been led by President and CEO Fidel Vargas since January 2013. His career has an unusual arc: elected the youngest mayor of a major U.S. city - Baldwin Park, California - at age 23, a founding partner of an investment firm, and an appointee to bipartisan presidential commissions under four presidents, from Clinton to Biden. He has also served on boards ranging from Snapchat to the California Science Center.

The founders remain part of the story too: Oscar and Dora Robles, whose 1975 second mortgage seeded an organization that now spans the country and Puerto Rico.