Eastside College Preparatory School

Eastside College Preparatory School

Eastside College Preparatory School was founded in 1996 by Chris Bischof and Helen Kim as a tuition-free, private high school serving first-generation and low-income students in East Palo Alto, California. The school operates entirely on private donations and grants and runs a residential program alongside its academic mission. Its campus on Myrtle Street includes dormitories, a gymnasium, a Center for the Arts, and faculty housing. The endowment's investment strategy spans buyout, venture capital, growth equity, co-investment, and fund-of-fund commitments. Confirmed exposures include early-stage, expansion, and turnaround situations, with additional allocations to natural resources and timber. The portfolio benefits from a board that includes General Partner Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark Capital, retired TPG CIO Jonathan Coslet, Foundation Capital founder Bill Elmore, and Meritech Capital Partners Managing Director George Bischof — a structure that embeds one of the deepest venture and private-equity advisory networks of any secondary-school endowment. The endowment participates in the Commonfund Benchmarks Study for performance comparison and maintains ties to professional networks including A Better Chance and the Urban Land Institute's UrbanPlan program. Co-curricular and capital partners extend to philanthropic entities such as Tipping Point Community and the Valhalla Foundation, while NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott has collaborated with the school through All Stars Helping Kids. What distinguishes Eastside from peer endowments is not just its tuition-free, residential model for students historically underrepresented in four-year colleges, but its governance architecture: an operating board whose members simultaneously source, diligence, and steward the private-market allocations that fund the entire enterprise. The endowment supplies the financial engine for a school that places 100% of its graduates into college — a closed loop where Silicon Valley deal flow directly underwrites educational access in the community adjacent to it.