According to The Gates Millennium Scholars Web site, they are "administered by the United Negro College Fund, [and] provides scholarships and fellowships for outstanding low-income African-American, Native American, Hispanic American, and Asian American students to attend the undergraduate and graduate institutions of their choice."
According to a brief history of the UNCF on its Web site, "the idea and mission of UNCF have attracted hundreds of thousands, who through their gifts and their goodwill have helped us to keep our students focused on achieving their college degrees. Numbered among our friends was Sen. John F. Kennedy, who later became president of the United States. In 1959, he donated the proceeds from his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, 'Profiles in Courage,' to UNCF.This organization has a longstanding and admirable reputation for helping the minority student gain financial help for college."
The NAACP is an important organization whose mission, as written at its Web site, "is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination." The NAACP has a Youth and College program that offers scholarship opportunities such as the Earl G. Graves Scholarship and the Agnes Jones Jackson Scholarship.