No it really isn’t. The only financial aspect I found (and I’ve read all the linked articles before and some again just now), is stuff like keeping dorms open over breaks when not everyone can afford to go home and leaving a dining hall open or providing food vouchers of some sort. Nothing about more money to send home to families or buy fancy clothes or a Starbucks/clubbing budget, though some schools do help with a suit for an interview or a winter coat or dorm bedding. Not specifically for first gens, but for the poorest kids.
If you read through the linked articles (the NYT is a good one to start with: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/education/edlife/first-generation-students-unite.html ), you’ll find what it’s primarily about is support for each other and improving programming (like orientation etc) to help first gens succeed. Colleges already knew first-gens face challenges other kids don’t, but have varying levels of success with helping them get through once they arrive on campus.
In 1Ivyg and similar organizations, very poor first gens talk to each other about how to handle living in “two worlds”, and not necessarily poor first gens can share tips and stories about navigating college without help from home. Many first gens don’t have the family help with things those with college educated parents do, like choosing classes/a major or “texting to brainstorm topics for papers” (two examples given by one of the reporters), that office hours are where they are expected to go not a place where they are imposing on a professor and so on.
One of the really cool examples in the NYT article is about a study done at one school. During new student orientation they had two groups of first-gen kids. One had an hour-long panel with students giving them tips about resources on campus, time management, whatever, and so did the second group except the second group’s panelists intermingled those tips with stories from their personal background (and the panel was made up of rich and poor students so both kinds of stories were told). The second group got something like a .3 higher GPA after the first year. THAT kind of stuff costs colleges nothing over their “normal” programming and can make a huge difference.
What I get from 1IvyG is not whining or asking for money for lattes, but first-generation-to-college students getting together both to help and support themselves and also to come up with solutions to problems that the colleges can help implement. To that I say bravo, not “stop whining about money”.