· Public charity
Hawaii Council for Humanities
To promote awareness of the humanities to the general public.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $170k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE OUTDOOR CIRCLE | $10,000 |
| ENLIVENED COOPERATIVE | $10,000 |
| EAST-WEST CENTER | $10,000 |
| OBAMA HAWAIIAN AFRICANA MUSEUM | $10,000 |
| PALAMA SETTLEMENT | $10,000 |
| MALAMA LEARNING CENTER | $10,000 |
| FILIPINO ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY WOMEN | $10,000 |
| HONOLULU BIENNIAL FOUNDATION DBA HAWAII CONTEMPORARY | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII SYSTEM | $10,000 |
| NORTH KOHALA COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER | $10,000 |
| MAUI ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS | $10,000 |
| GEORGE AND MARGUERITE SIMSON BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH CENTER | $10,000 |
| HONOLULU PRINTMAKERS | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII SYSTEM | $10,000 |
| DONKEY MILL ART CENTER | $10,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–23, $37k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% of those 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.
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.
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.
34 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 26 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 45% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $110k 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
- BMBISHOP MUSEUM5× · 2018–2023 · $62k · revenue +131%
- KHKONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY3× · 2020–2022 · $60k · revenue +102%
- KKKOKUA KALIHI VALLEY COMPREHENSIVE FAMILY SERVICES3× · 2020–2022 · $55k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- JCJAPANESE CULTURAL CENTER OF HAWAIIgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $30k · revenue +137%
- KMKAUAI MUSEUM ASSOCIATION LTDgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $30k · revenue +101%
- KAKUA AINA ULU AUAMOgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +171%
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 rehabilitate, curate, and steward the natural and cultural resources of Kawa to honor the past, benefit the present, and preserve for the future generations of Ka'u, the Island of Hawaii and all humankind.
For the benefit and inspiration of ALL, Na Hoa Aloha o ka Pu'uhonua o Honaunau participates with NPS and other partners to protect and preserve cultural and natural resources, guided by the aacestral knowledge of South Kona.
Our mission is to protect, perpetuate, and enhance the cultural and natural landscape of the kiholo bay area through collaborative management and active community stewardship.
Nonprofit dedicated to community education and culture.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Makauila Inc and the most unlike its peers is Hawaii Book and Music Festival. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 29 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
83 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. 83 of the 95 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 BISHOP MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds KONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HAWAIIAN MISSION CHILDREN'S SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds KOKUA KALIHI VALLEY COMPREHENSIVE FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds MAUI ARTS & CULTURAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDS OF IOLANI PALACE ↗
- Who funds BAMBOO RIDGE PRESS ↗
- Who funds MANOA HERITAGE CENTER FKA MANOA VALLEY CULTURAL HERITAGE FOUND ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC HAWAI'I FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HONOLULU MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds DAUGHTERS OF HAWAII ↗
- Who funds HOLUALOA FOUNDATION FOR ARTS & CULTURE ↗
- Who funds READ TO ME INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE LAHAINA RESTORATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds JAPANESE CULTURAL CENTER OF HAWAII ↗
- Who funds EAST HAWAII CULTURAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds KAUAI MUSEUM ASSOCIATION LTD ↗
- Who funds KUALOA-HEEIA ECUMENICAL YOUTH PROJECT ↗
- Who funds MERWIN CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds KAULUAKALANA ↗
- Who funds HUI NO'EAU ↗
- Who funds LANA'I CULTURE & HERITAGE CENTER ↗
- Who funds HAWAIIAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Dancers Unlimited ↗
- Who funds HANA ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds KALIHI-PALAMA CULTURE & ARTS SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds KUA AINA ULU AUAMO ↗
- Who funds MAUNALUA FISHPOND HERITAGE CENTER ↗
- Who funds KRAUSE FAMILY FOUNDATION ALANA KE ALOHA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF WAIPAHU CULTURAL GARDEN PARK ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC ↗
- Who funds PALAMA SETTLEMENT ↗
- Who funds ALOHA KUAMO'O' AINA ↗
- Who funds KA'OHANA O KALAUPAPA ↗
- Who funds HAWAII UNITED OKINAWA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PU'A FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MOANALUA GARDENS 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: Atherton Family Foundation · Trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop Dba Kamehameha Schools · Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement · Cooke Foundation Limited · Kosasa Foundation · Bank of Hawaii Charitable Fdn · Aloha United Way Inc · Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau · J Watumull Fund · Central Pacific Bank Foundation · Historic Hawai'I 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 Hawaii Council for Humanities 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.
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Hawaii Council for Humanities?
Find your warmest path to Hawaii Council for Humanities through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.