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Education & Career Growth
Mentorship, interview prep, salary negotiation, the pivot, the degree. The room you wish you'd had at your first job.
The brief
The HBCUs, and the money that is already sitting there
There are around a hundred historically Black colleges and universities, and two national funds that exist purely to pay for people to attend them. The applications are annual and the eligibility is narrower than people assume, in both directions.
Two funds, two different sets of schools
The Thurgood Marshall College Fund serves 47 public HBCUs and predominantly Black institutions. UNCF has 37 member institutions, which are the private ones. They are not the same list, and which fund you apply to follows from which school you are going to.
What the awards are worth
TMCF awards run from $2,500 to $20,000 for students at HBCUs and PBIs. Most UNCF scholarships are for students at its 37 member institutions, though a growing number are open to students at any HBCU — so it is worth reading the eligibility line rather than assuming you are out.
The employer route is a separate door
Both funds run corporate partner programs that place students into internships and roles, which is a different application from the scholarship one and gets far less attention.
Mid-career is not covered by either
If you are already working, the National Black MBA Association is the network that runs chapters, a large annual conference and a pitch competition. It is the closest thing to an alumni association for people who did not have one.
Every link above was fetched on 2026-08-31 before it was published. Four were dead on the first pass and were replaced rather than printed.
They did this work first
The RecordDoing it now
The directory25 Black-owned businesses in this directory work in what this room is about. Counted from the listings, so it moves when they do.