The Hawaii Community Foundation is adjusting its approach as it marks its centennial next year and welcomes the former head of the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands as its new president and chief operating officer.
Micah Kane is currently chief operating officer at Pacific Links International, where he oversees real estate development and mergers and acquisitions in Hawaii. He has served on the Hawaii Community Foundation’s board of governors, is on the board of Hawaiian Electric Co. and is a trustee for Kamehameha Schools.
COMMUNITY FOUNDATION TIMELINE
A timeline of giving
» 1916: The Hawaiian Foundation becomes the eighth community foundation in America, financed by unclaimed deposits and bank assets.
» 1923: The foundation receives its first donation from Rose Makee Tenney to be used for unrestricted purposes including the promotion of education and scientific research; the care of the sick, aged or helpless; and the improvement of living conditions regardless of race, color or creed.
» 1928: Irene Holloway donates $10,000 for Lunalilo Home for aged and indigent Native Hawaiians, representing the organization’s first "designated" donation.
» 1936: The Lillian K. Wilder Fund is established to help needy people in Hawaii with a preference to people of Hawaiian ancestry.
» 1987: The foundation is reorganized to include trustees and a board of governors and is renamed the Hawaii Community Foundation. Robert E. Black bequeaths more than $60 million to the foundation, representing Hawaii’s largest discretionary endowment. Black wanted his money to be used for health, residential treatment, culture and private education.
» 1992: The foundation grows from $12 million in assets in 1988 to $166 million.
» 1995: Assets grow to more than $216 million. Some 1,326 scholarships worth more than $1.4 million are awarded to Hawaii students.
» 1999: The foundation joins with The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The David Lucile Packard Foundation on a program called The National Resources Conservation Program to help secure the long-term health of Hawaii’s natural resources. The foundation is named administrator of the Hawaii Tobacco Prevention and Control Trust Fund, which the Legislature created as a result of a settlement with the tobacco industry.
» 2000-2001: The foundation opens offices in Waimea on Hawaii island; Wailuku; and Lihue. It administers $20 million in grants. Charitable assets grow to $284 million. The September 11th Fund is established, and Hawaii residents donate gifts worth more than $900,000 to help victims of the attacks and their families.
» 2002: Scholarship applications are available online, which increases the number of applications from 300 to 1,000 in the first year. By 2006 the number of scholarship applications jumps to more than 6,000.
» 2003: The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing allocates $3.9 million to the foundation for enforcement, treatment and prevention/education activities to combat crystal meth,amphetamine or "ice," use in Hawaii. A public-private partnership called the Crystal Methamphetamine Initiative is created to develop a comprehensive approach involving county governments, law enforcement, nonprofits and community groups.
» 2005: The foundation manages more than 440 funds and administers nearly $20 million in grants from foundation funds and $10 million from 18 private foundations.
» 2009: The Hawaii Community Stabilization Initiative is created to help island families following the global recession. The foundation distributes the most grant money and contracts in its history, worth $41 million.
» 2011: The foundation moves from the Finance Factors building on Bishop Street to the historic C. Brewer Building on Fort Street.
Source: Hawaii Community Foundation
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“Micah’s an extremely well-networked person, and he’s going to bring a Rolodex to the foundation that none of us has or at least is complementary to what we have,” said Kelvin Taketa, the foundation’s chief executive officer, in a telephone interview. “Micah has credibility in the Native Hawaiian community, where we already do a lot of work. We want to build stronger relationships with all of our partners.”
The Hawaii Community Foundation will spend the next two years celebrating its centennial by doing even more in the islands than dispersing $40 million to $50 million every year to help the young, seniors, public education, medical research and “everything in between,” Taketa said.
Now the foundation wants to do a better job of bringing together donors and the nonprofits they finance.
“We’ve got a lot of experience, both good and bad, on issues that mattered,” Taketa said. “But we were not doing a very good job of sharing the knowledge with either the nonprofit sector to help them get better, and with funders, the people who care about investing. We needed to do a better job of sharing that information. We’re going to bring everybody to the table to talk.”
The Hawaii Community Foundation, formerly the Hawaiian Foundation, became America’s eighth community foundation when it was formed in 1916 using unclaimed deposits and bank assets by people who had died without leaving a will.
Today, Michael Broderick, president and CEO of the YMCA Honolulu, calls the Hawaii Community Foundation “one of the most critical organizations in the state of Hawaii.”
For example, the foundation reached out when it heard the YMCA was interested in helping reduce childhood obesity.
The foundation helped fund a $15,000, two-year “keiki obesity” pilot project through Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children to work with morbidly obese children, their siblings and parents to learn how to cook and eat better, exercise and make other positive lifestyle changes, said Kerri Van Duyne, the YMCA’s vice president of development.
Three years after the pilot project ended, the program is still helping obese youths from 9 to 15 years old who are at risk of developing diabetes, joint problems, asthma and other weight-related conditions, Van Duyne said.
Nonprofit groups especially appreciate the Hawaii Community Foundation’s “flex grants,” which have no strings attached, Broderick said.
“They are uncommon and especially valuable because they are unrestricted,” Broderick said by phone. “It’s very unusual and extremely helpful. Hundreds and hundreds of organizations apply every year.”
Following the global recession that began in 2008, the foundation began shaping its new philosophy.
To help struggling families in Hawaii, a dozen donors contributed to a three-year “community stabilization initiative” to get money and assistance out quickly.
Donors made it possible for the state’s only accredited credit counselor — the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Hawaii, or CCCS of Hawaii — to hire more staff to help those in need survive the economic downturn.
“It would have taken them a year to get money to apply for grants and put the staff together,” Taketa said. “We were able to get the money out the door in 60 days. It taught us that we need to bring together the key players.”
Between 2009 and 2012, 30 nonprofits and government organizations immediately received a total of $4.2 million through the Hawaii Community Foundation. The money translated into financial assistance to more than 33,000 families and individuals across the islands.
Kim Gennaula, who oversees fundraising as ‘Iolani School’s director of advancement, worked with the Hawaii Community Foundation in her previous role as philanthropy director at Kapiolani Medical Center. Gennaula also was CEO of Aloha United Way for nearly four years.
She said the foundation “can easily decide to spend their centennial year raising more money for themselves. But they want to raise capacity for all of our nonprofits. A lot of nonprofits need the help, and I’m glad to see HCF taking that approach. I’m personally grateful.”
