· Public charity
Hawaii Justice Foundation
To facilitate the public's knowledge and understanding of the law, provide legal aid to the poor and improve the administration of justice.
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.
The 27 grants below total $2,657,169 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,418,131 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $760,962 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k11 grants · $155k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+3 grants · $1.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF HAWAII | $450,000 |
| DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ACTION CENTER | $360,000 |
| VOLUNTEER LEGAL SERVICES OF HAWAII | $360,000 |
| THE LEGAL CLINIC | $232,000 |
| MEDIATION CENTER OF THE PACIFIC INC | $200,000 |
| HAWAII APPLESEED CENTER FOR LAW | $150,000 |
| KUIKAHI MEDIATION CENTER INC | $100,000 |
| MEDIATION SERVICES OF MAUI | $100,000 |
| KAUAI ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY INC | $100,000 |
| WEST HAWAII MEDIATION CENTER | $100,000 |
| NATIVE HAWAIIAN LEGAL CORPORATION | $80,000 |
| ETHNIC EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $70,000 |
| PRO BONO ORGANIZATION FOR NATIVE | $50,169 |
| HALE 'OPIO KAUAI INC | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +51% since the first grant, against +32% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 2 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $70k 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
- LALEGAL AID SOCIETY OF HAWAII8× · 2017–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +25%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +56%
- DVDOMESTIC VIOLENCE ACTION CENTER8× · 2017–2024 · $910k · revenue +37%
Funded once
- LSLEGAL SERVICES CORPORATIONgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $150k · revenue +32%
- UMUNITED METHODIST CHURCH FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCHone grant, 2019 · $60k
- IIIsland Instituteone grant, 2017 · $56k · revenue -7%
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.
Assist businesses and promote Hawaii Island.
The hawaii workers center envisions a hawaii in which all workers are empowered to exercise their right to organize for their social, economic and political well-being.
Hawaii island community development corporation was established on july 7, 1986, to provide families with low and moderate income with adequate housing and to acquire, construct and provide housing related activities.
To improve the health and well-being of our community.
To encourage increased investment in sustainable and community-based approaches to economic development hacbed advances its mission to address, social, economic, and environmental justice in hawaii through community based economic…
To provide and promote private sector support and expertise for balanced growth in hawai'i county in partnership with federal, state, county and private resources.
To provide "culturally-minded evidenced-based behavioral health care that is responsive to the needs of the medically underserved, predominantly native hawaiian, and rural communities. the organization provides behavioral health services…
To preserve the immediate and long-term health and wellbeing of lahaina's diverse communities and precious natural resources.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Legal Aid Society of Hawaii and the most unlike its peers is University of Hawaii Foundation. 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 47 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) — 7% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 31 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 LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF HAWAII ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEER LEGAL SERVICES HAWAII ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ACTION CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE LEGAL CLINIC ↗
- Who funds HAWAII APPLESEED CENTER FOR LAW AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds THE MEDIATION CENTER OF THE PACIFIC INC ↗
- Who funds KUIKAHI MEDIATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MEDIATION SERVICES OF MAUI INC ↗
- Who funds BIG ISLAND MEDIATION ↗
- Who funds KAUAI ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds ETHNIC EDUCATION HAWAI'I ↗
- Who funds NATIVE HAWAIIAN LEGAL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds HALE OPIO KAUAI INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds WAIKIKI HEALTH ↗
- Who funds HAWAII FOODBANK INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF HAWAII ↗
- Who funds HAWAII DISABILITY RIGHTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS HAWAII INC ↗
- Who funds HALE KIPA INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CASA - HAWAII ↗
- Who funds Island Institute ↗
- Who funds PRO BONO ORGANIZATION FOR NATIVE OHANA INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDRENS LAW PROJECT OF HAWAII ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR STATE COURTS ↗
- Who funds Hawaii Family Law Clinic ↗
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: The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation Inc · Aloha United Way Inc · Atherton Family Foundation · Bank of Hawaii Charitable Fdn · Hawaii Island United Way Inc · Hawaii State Bar Foundation · Hawaii Women's Legal Foundation · Kauai United Way · Hawai'i Pacific Health · Padosi Foundation · Hawaii Hotel Industry Foundation · McInerny 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 Justice 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.
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 Justice Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Hawaii Justice Foundation 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.