ABOUT US
COVID-19 and the related shocks to the non-profit sector reaffirmed the need for a community-driven Donor Advised Fund (DAF) offering in Hawaiʻi. Ho‘iwai’s core team spent 2020 exploring the possibility and feasibility of expanding the offerings for DAF holders and their beneficiaries in Hawaiʻi. Our interviews with the philanthropic sector helped us to identify best practices in trust-based, equity driven philanthropy. Our community interviews inflected these practices with local and native Hawaiian values. Our interviews with equity driven philanthropic service providers helped us to understand how we could link these service providers together to serve Hawaiʻi’s donors.
The Ho‘iwai Fund (HF) is a collaborative effort to co-create a new mechanism to distribute philanthropic capital across the Hawaiian islands. Using a human-centered design approach to developing its structure and operations, this social justice grant making and impact fund is being built from an understanding of the needs and interests of its beneficiaries: the hardworking change agents in the state of Hawai‘i, who, if better resourced, would be the solution to the problems they face.
About our Logo
Mapping: Disrupt, Reclaim & Synthesize
Reference name: Legion
Attributes: Direction of flow downstream, shape suggest a shift in water. Rounded edges on type reference the smoothing of rocks as constant water flowing over them over time. Color derives from the ‘O‘opu Alamo‘o and Hihiwai. ‘O‘opu travel Makai to Mauka over their lifespan. This span indicated a healthy return to resource abundance.
Makawalu: Multiple water sources, numbering in 8 representing Ko Hawai‘i Pae‘aina. Hierarchy = source / return / life
What if funder-grantee relationships were based on trust, while evaluation was an opportunity to co-actively learn and evolve as stewards?
Investing in people that reflect the values of the world we want to live in. Freeing up valuable time and energy that changemakers need to devote towards their mission through streamlined reporting and flexible funding.
What if community foundations served as a gathering place for like minded individuals and changemakers to build financial, and social, capital?
Centering trust and relationship building as an act of collective care. Foundations being held accountable to communities that are often underserved, overlooked and underfunded.
What if philanthropy could further maximize the transformation of the economic system by using invested assets to have an even more profound impact on the community and our world?
Committing to investing assets aligned with environmental, social, and governance values (ESG) while tactically deploying a share of assets within local economies to grow social enterprises working to the same ends as non-profits.
OUR VALUES
🜄 Equity
What if philanthropy became one of the means of transforming the power relations embedded within contemporary capitalism rather than a reflection of it? We intend to build a fund rooted in and powered by a deep commitment to equity and social/economic justice.
🜄 Trust
Too often, grant recipients are bogged down by onerous application processes and reporting requirements, taking them away from executing their mission. Trust based philanthropy reimagines traditional funder-grantee relationships, putting this value proposition into action through streamlined reporting, multi-year unrestricted funding, practicing open and transparent communication, supporting their grantees through networking and capacity building; and emphasizing co-learning and co-discovery as an essential process to shift the current funder-grantee dynamic.
🜄 Community Connection
Foundations can serve as a gathering place for like minded individuals and changemakers. We see this as a core and critical function of community foundations as they gather not just those with financial capital, but also social capital. By gathering, we harmonize and optimize how we use our resources and act as an incubator of new ideas and insights that enable both funder and grantee to adapt and respond to a fast-changing socio-political and bio-cultural environment.
🜄 Alignment
While the impact that a foundation can have through its grant-making is laudable, its invested assets can have an even more profound impact on the community and our world. We believe Foundations must ensure that their invested assets align with their environmental, social, and governance values (ESG) and that they are tactically deployed within local economies to help grow social enterprises working to the same ends as non-profits. These investments will further maximize the transformation of the economic system by advocating for ethical policies and practices of corporations, supporting leading-edge, regenerative business and infrastructure solutions to civilization's challenges, and facilitating a more just society that invests more equitably in women, people of color, and other marginalized populations, including the indigenous people of Hawaiʻi.
Hoʻiwai Fund extends its 501c3 status to fiscally sponsor select projects aligned with the organization’s mission.
Hawaiʻi’s first association of funders and philanthropy-serving organization (PSO) serving Hawaiʻi’s philanthropic community.
A women’s learning circle committed to increasing the dedicated financial and intellectual capital invested in women-leadership in Hawaiʻi.