· Private foundation
Charles and Mitch Ota Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k32 grants · $700k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $370k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| GROW SOME GOOD | $70,000 |
| FRIENDS OF MOLOKAI HIGH AND MIDDLE | $50,000 |
| HANA ARTS | $50,000 |
| MA KA HANA KA 'IKE | $50,000 |
| CHILDRENS JUSTICE CENTER OF MAUI | $50,000 |
| LANAI ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS | $30,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF MAUI | $30,000 |
| HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| PAIA YOUTH COUNCIL INC | $30,000 |
| HUI NOEAU | $30,000 |
| JAPANESE CULTURAL CENTER OF HAWAII | $25,000 |
| KEKAULIKE HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| MAUI HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| HP BALDWIN HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 77% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 27% of Charles and Mitch Ota Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 84% of the giving stays in HI; read by stated purpose it is 54% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
27 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 67% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $345k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- UOUNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION2× · 2023–2024 · $212k · revenue +45%
- MHMAUI HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $207k · revenue +64% · 58% of their budget
- GCGrand Canyon University5× · 2020–2024 · $130k · revenue +37%
Funded once
- KKKING KEKAULIKE HIGH SCHOOL PTSAone grant, 2020 · $58k
- SUSEATTLE UNIVERSITY FBO KAEHUKAI KAAone grant, 2022 · $20k
- WSWASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY FBO MYKone grant, 2022 · $20k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
To develop educated, well-rounded individuals who are well prepared for college.
To re-establish the systems that sustain our community through educational initiatives and land-based practices that cultivate abundance, regenerate responsibilities, and promote collective health and well being.
Hoa aina o makaha (land of makaha shared in friendship) is more than a destination farm or nonprofit organization. the embrace of a sanctuary is felt by whoever enters the gates and a sense of belonging usually follows. once a barren piece…
Scholarships and awards are granted to the hualalai community employees, their spouses, and their children. medical awards cover expenses incurred beyond medical insurance, and educational scholarships are for preschool through college,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hui No'eau and the most unlike its peers is Seattle University. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 31 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
22 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 22 of the 51 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAUI HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Grand Canyon University ↗
- Who funds MAUI UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds HP BALDWIN HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF MAUI INC ↗
- Who funds GROW SOME GOOD ↗
- Who funds PA'IA YOUTH COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds HUI NO'EAU ↗
- Who funds MA KA HANA KA IKE BUILDING PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds HANA ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LANAI ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS IN ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MAUI WAENA INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds JAPANESE CULTURAL CENTER OF HAWAII ↗
- Who funds KEKAULIKE HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION INC ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Nuestro Futuro Inc · Atherton Family Foundation · Bendon Family Foundation · Fred Baldwin Memorial Foundation · Botton Foundation · The Makana Aloha Foundation · The Red Cabin Foundation Trust · Maui United Way · Kosasa Foundation · Cooke Foundation Limited · The Hanley Foundation · The Strong Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Charles and Mitch Ota Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- University of Portland — 1% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.