The Taj Gregory Memorial Fund

Erica Holmes remembers her son Taj Gregory as an introverted yet confident young man. One who easily connected with people and who always looked for ways to help.

He loved his family, his community, and he taught himself how to build a PC from scratch, Erica recalled. He claimed he couldn’t dance, but never failed to find the rhythm.

“I always want to share him with people,” Erica said.

Taj passed away unexpectedly in 2023 from an undiagnosed heart condition. He was 25 years old.

A single mother of two other children, Erica was devastated, uncertain, and numb. She returned to work after only six weeks, and threw herself into her job.

“I was in a cloud for about a year,” she recalled. “I was operating like a robot and I was not able to grieve. But after a year I stepped away to soak everything in and be there for my daughters and grieve with them.”

As she began that difficult journey, Erica knew she wanted to do something special to honor her son. She wanted to talk about him and share his story. But whenever she sat down with someone else who knew and loved him, she ended up comforting them.

“I wanted to be able to talk about him and share him in a way where I could explore and live in my grief and not have to console someone else,” Erica said.

She immediately thought of Camp Akulana and the many years Taj spent there. Erica had placed Taj in camp when he was 9, and the experience enriched, empowered, and uplifted her son. He loved camp so much that he kept coming back, eventually serving as a counselor and later, taking time off from work to volunteer.

Erica knew that this was the perfect avenue to honor her son’s legacy. In fact, she had already started working with Camp Akulana to raise funds to help more low-income families provide their children with the transformative camp experience, but she wanted to do more.

Having spent 20 years in the nonprofit sector, Erica was well acquainted with the Community Foundation for a greater Richmond. But it wasn’t until she talked with a staff member at an event hosted by the Foundation and shared her idea that the project gained momentum.

Soon after, she met Greg Gallop, the Community Foundation’s Director of Inclusive Philanthropy, and together, they developed what would become the Taj Gregory Memorial Fund.

This flexible Donor-Advised Fund (DAF), which officially launched in April of this year, can receive donations which can then be used to cover the cost of 501(c)(3) nonprofit camps for families with a financial need.

 

Erica was surprised that this approach was far simpler than she originally assumed.

“Because the Community Foundation basically handles 90% of it,” Erica shared, “I am able to focus on telling my son’s story and making these connections with families and camps.”

Erica already has been hard at work, connecting families with camps across the Richmond region and even down to Petersburg and the Tri-Cities. And while the fund is still in the early days, Erica has clear goals in mind.

Increasing camp attendance numbers for families with a financial need is paramount. But Erica also wants to make sure each child has meaningful experiences; the kinds that inspire them to want to give back to their community. Just like it did for her son. Erica also believes that the fund represents and builds upon the Black community’s strong tradition of philanthropy.

“And not just through financial giving,” she said, “but through volunteering, mentoring, serving, and showing up for one another.”

As the fund grows, Erica also hopes that more kids will be able to explore skills and activities that they would not usually have access to, within an atmosphere that acknowledges that representation matters.

“That's why Taj kept coming back year after year,” she said. “Because there were a lot of young kids at camp that looked like him. They were able to see a young, Black male caving, swimming, building fires in the woods, and breaking all the unfair stereotypes. That’s a legacy of his I want to continue.”

Today, Erica is committed to growing the fund managed through the Community Foundation, keeping her son’s memory alive for generations to come, and broadening how people think about and view philanthropy.

“Taj’s story will inspire other kids who look like him and let them know that this kind of joy can belong to them too,” she smiled. “That way, someone will always know him.”