Florida A&M University Foundation

Florida A&M University Foundation

Founded in 1966, the Florida A&M University Foundation operates as the primary fundraising and investment vehicle for the nation's highest-ranked public historically Black university. Kenneth M. Neighbors leads the board, with Donald E. Palm, III serving as Interim Executive Director. The Foundation's wealth originates from a diffuse base of alumni, corporate, and private-sector donors, channeled into an endowment that supports academic programs and university operations. Unlike a centrally-managed multi-billion-dollar university endowment, FAMU's Foundation holds a mix of directly-owned properties and financial assets. The portfolio reflects a distinct operating model that blends traditional endowment assets with directly-held local real estate. Financial holdings include a hedge fund pool, a private debt portfolio, and domestic fixed-income instruments. The Foundation also makes venture capital commitments across seed, early-stage, and expansion stages. Alongside these financial assets, the Foundation owns a cluster of tangible properties in Tallahassee and Brooksville, Florida: a corporate office on South Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, two residential properties at Brooklyn Yard, the Foster-Tanner Fine Arts Collection, and the Brooksville Agricultural Research Station. This direct real estate footprint separates it from peer endowments that primarily hold assets through commingled funds. Corporate relationships fill the role that co-investor networks play for larger funds. JPMorgan Chase stands as a long-time business partner, funding student-success and financial-literacy programs. Jones Lang LaSalle has endowed a commercial real estate scholarship. The Foundation maintains ties to the UNCF through Project ACCLAIM, an initiative to broaden access to asset-management careers. Lisa Rae LaBoo, CEO of Prosperity Investment Services, serves as a board member alongside Neighbors. The Foundation's most visible recent operational event was the May 2024 fallout from a fraudulent $237 million stock donation attempt by Gregory Gerami, a revelation that prompted a university-wide investigation and highlighted governance vulnerabilities that the Foundation is now reportedly addressing. The Foundation's structural differentiator is its hybrid balance sheet: it is an endowment that also functions as a direct owner of agricultural, residential, and cultural real estate. This configuration combines a standard institutional investment program with a local operating-company posture, but it also introduces illiquidity and governance complexity that most university endowments of similar size avoid. The Gerami incident underscored the challenges of managing donation verification and board oversight within this hybrid architecture.