Senior tight end Harold Moleni is a husband, a father and a finance major at the University of Hawaii, but it didn’t take a 3.82 grade-point average to figure out what the new cost of attendance stipend will mean.

“It is about peace of mind,” Moleni said. “I know this will help me provide for my family.”

UH is allotting $256,100 to be split among its 246.1 scholarships, about a third of which is thanks to a contribution said to be “in excess of $1 million” over two years from the Waterhouse Charitable Trust.

The landmark NCAA legislation that became operative Aug. 1 allows schools to offer stipends for miscellaneous expenses, including computers, laundry, transportation and food not covered by traditional scholarships, which provide for tuition, books, room and board.

The NCAA policy is part of a broader athletes rights initiative to forestall the push for union representation and additional litigation.

UH said it could begin sending out checks as soon as September.

“I’m excited and I know my teammates will be, too,” said Moleni, the 25-year-old father of a 16-month-old son, who was among the first players notified Tuesday. “When I came here (in 2012 from Utah), I was the only married guy on the team. Now there are four of five of us. Coach (Norm) Chow has been telling us to just worry about our education and football and he’d take care of the rest and I’m so appreciative of what he and the (Waterhouse) Trust are doing,” Moleni said.

“It is a start, that’s what this is about,” said Chow, who got the ball rolling with influential boosters. “Boise State is giving $5,000, but there are also schools that are not giving anything (for football), so we are blessed.”

Each UH team will be given an allocation based on the number of scholarships it awards. It will be up to the coaches to determine how much each scholarship athlete receives. Chow said he expects all 85 scholarship athletes to each receive $1,000.

Athletic director David Matlin said UH could have waited for better financial times before offering COA but said, “We felt like this was something that we needed to do sooner rather than later for the welfare of our student-athletes and to be competitive (in recruiting).”

He said the amounts could change in 2016-17 and beyond depending on UH finances.

Under guidelines set by the UH Manoa Financial Aid Office, the school could have offered as much as $3,925, plus travel costs this year if it had the wherewithal, officials said.

Matlin said, “We’re doing what we feel is fiscally responsible for where we are at right now.”

Of UH’s total COA allocation, $85,000 will be funded by the Waterhouse gift; $55,000 from an NCAA grant and $116,100 from athletic department funds.

The remainder of the Waterhouse donation will go supporting the football program in summer school, meals, nutritional supplements and equipment, UH said.

Matlin said he hopes additional donations inspired by the Waterhouse lead gift reduce or eliminate the department’s $116,100 obligation.

UH is projecting as much as a $4 million deficit for the current fiscal year.

A resolution by the Associated Students of UH earlier this month had supported stipends “… under the condition that expenses not come from the general student body population or from the State Legislature and shall instead be appropriated from an endowment fund or from private sponsors …”

Matlin said, “We heard them and and we think that makes a lot of sense. We’ve still got some work to do (raising money).”

ASUH Senator Sean Mitsui, who sponsored the resolution, said, “I was in favor of something, until they had a full mechanism set up where it was purely from external funds, that they would postpone this for another semester. Honestly, I get it that wasn’t going to be the case. I’m disappointed, but I’m hoping athletics can work on having it fully externally funded.”

In the 12-member Mountain West Conference, where UH competes in football, Hawaii is one of nine schools that will offer COA this year. The Air Force Academy already offers stipends to all students, while New Mexico, Nevada and Nevada-Las Vegas will wait until 2016 to offer for football, a spokesman said. Boise State tops the conference and said it will offer as much as $5,486 per athlete depending on residency.

UH, which competes in the Big West in most other sports, is the only school in the nine-member league to announce across-the-board stipends.

“This gift will help us tremendously in our commitment to improving and enhancing the welfare of our student athletes,” Manoa Chancellor Robert Bley-Vroman said.

The Waterhouse Trust is named for the late Alec Waterhouse, a long-time UH fan and booster who also funded the 10,000-square-foot Waterhouse Physiology Research and Training Facility on campus.

“I think he would be proud of the athletes this latest gift is helping,” Matlin said.