On August 25, 2026, The Community Foundation hosted a Donors Forum during Black Philanthropy Month featuring a conversation between with Tahira Christmon, Vice President of External Affairs at ABFE, and Darryl Thompson, Managing Partner and CIO of the New Voices Fund.
Experts in the field of philanthropy study trends and strategies to make the greatest impact through charitable giving. This Donors Forum offered insights into the role of capital in philanthropy through a wider lens, considering what equity means in philanthropy across the entire journey of wealth creation, asset growth and investment, and charitable giving.
Before wealth can be given away, it first has to be created, grown, and invested. Opportunities must exist for entrepreneurs to build businesses, for investors to deploy capital, and for individuals and families to participate in wealth creation and ownership.
Darryl Thompson grew up in a small North Carolina town, was a Morehead Scholar at UNC Chapel Hill, and then pursued biochemical engineering at MIT before discovering a passion for business and finance. He worked in mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley, then Stanford Business School.
A pivotal person in his career was Reginald F. Lewis, a pioneering financier and entrepreneur who was renowned for breaking down racial barriers on Wall Street, who he sought as a mentor. Thompson’s key lesson from Lewis is that ownership, not just employment or fees, is the real path to wealth creation.
He shared the following key points on strategic investing:
- Founder assessment matters more than the idea: Thompson prioritizes whether a founder is “coachable” — able to take input and execute — over even a great business idea.
- Capital alone doesn’t solve problems: expertise, market access (e.g., getting onto shelves at stores like Walmart or Target), and operational experience matter as much as money.
- Success isn’t just valuation: a “successful business” doesn’t need to scale to billions — sustainable community impact and employment count, too.
- Venture capital vs. private equity: PE targets lower-risk, established companies with modest but reliable returns; venture capital targets high-risk startups seeking outsized (4-6x+) returns, with higher failure rates.
Thompson spoke candidly about the approach his fund takes to investing in businesses led by women and minorities and the lessons learned from recent experience.
He said the post-George Floyd capital influx into Black founders’ ventures created “false security” — a reactionary surge of investment that didn’t always correspond to a sustainable business model.
By 2022-2023, as the political and cultural environment shifted, capital pulled back sharply, exposing companies that had received growth opportunities without the production or operational capacity to sustain it.
His takeaway: successful investors focus on investing in culture and sustainable fundamentals, not just founder demographics, to build resilient portfolios that survive the swings of politics, culture, and market volatility.
Another way the New Voices Fund works to build a more inclusive society is through philanthropy. Thompson said the fund explicitly expects portfolio founders to “give back” once successful — building philanthropy into their fund culture, rather than as an afterthought.
He also advocated teaching young people to think about financial literacy and to teach them the basic principles of investing and saving, for example, the power of compound interest.
Donors Forum is an initiative of The Community Foundation that fosters professional learning, discussion and idea-sharing among Northeast Florida grantmakers. Donors Forum is attended by individual donors, private and family foundations, community foundations, public charity grantmakers, and corporate giving programs. Learn more at jaxcf.org/donors-forum.
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