First Hawaiian Bank, Hawaiʻi Community Foundation Top State’s Most Charitable Lists

Hawai‘i suffered few natural disasters in 2025 but was buffeted by deep cuts in federal grants and assistance, prompting 83 state companies and nonprofits to pour more than $329 million into coffers of charitable organizations.

The current year has already delivered severe damage from back-to-back storms from spring into the fall, putting strains on government, companies and nonprofits to provide emergency responses as well as sustained aid to those affected.

Even more troubling, federal cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs are timed to go into effect in January 2027 as part of President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” aimed at cutting spending in order to finance tax cuts to the highest earners. Philanthropic leaders say that already assures that the year ahead will pose challenges to fill funding gaps even if no natural disasters occur.

“I’d say 2025 was chaotic because we reactivated the Hawai‘i Resilience Fund in response to the federal cutbacks,” says Michelle Ka‘uhane, chief operating officer and executive vice president of Hawai‘i Community Foundation, which topped the list of most charitable nonprofits, with distributions of $115 million to some 1,464 organizations.

“And I say chaotic because one thing happens, and then two days later, it changes. And then another thing happens, and then another executive order changes it. And so there hasn’t really been clarity on what is the long-term impact to our nonprofit sector.”

The state faced reduced access to more than $97 million in federal funding in 2025, with an additional $300 million at risk, according to the foundation’s annual report.

“So I would say that the disaster of the year was the federal chaos. Not small, it was a different kind of issue or incident. It wasn’t a weather pattern. It wasn’t a fire or a climate-related incident, but it was the ever-changing executive order, confusion around what exists and what doesn’t exist. So, a different kind of response was necessary.”

The Hawai‘i Resilience Fund was last activated during the Covid pandemic. These funds sustain services such as survivor support to victims of domestic violence, children experiencing homelessness, staff resilience at community health centers and support for Native Hawaiian families.

That’s on top of a range of its other funds, including the Maui Strong Fund that is still active with the rebuilding of Lahaina three years after wildfires destroyed the town and killed more than 100 people.

As the state’s primary conduit for philanthropic funding, the 110-year-old foundation relies on donations from corporations, other nonprofits as well as individuals. The year’s total contributions were significantly less than the prior year amount of $151.7 million, but that reflected a spend down of residual funding for Lahaina wildfire recovery programs, Ka‘uhane says.

The latest year’s donations are still higher than pre-Covid levels, she noted, although the annual outflow has exceeded revenues for the past two years. She appeals to donors to make charitable gifts that can be used for multiple purposes.

“It gives our team the flexibility to really meet communities where they’re at – when they need food, they feed them, when they need temporary housing, we do that, right? That’s what we find to be the most impactful, and donors enjoy seeing the impact of their dollars.”

At the end of 2025, HCF built up a robust corporate sponsorship program to encourage ongoing support over the years.

“I’m very inspired by the generosity of corporations” in the state, says Ka‘uhane.

“We want to acknowledge our local businesses that are giving and trying to make them a natural part of our stronger Hawai‘i – that we are stronger together, and if our businesses hold hands with us, not just in [emergency] response, but for long-term resilience, we’re really working on building a more robust corporate sponsorship program that says we are in partnership with the businesses here to take care of our community.”

First Hawaiian Bank employees gathered at a charity event. Photo courtesy of First Hawaiian Bank

First Hawaiian Bank Tops Corporate Giving

The most charitable company in the state during the past year was First Hawaiian Bank, which has been at the top of the list for all but three of the last 14 years. In 2025, the bank contributed $6.6 million in cash and in-kind donations, eclipsing The Nakupuna Companies and last year’s leader Matson, which fell to third place.

First Hawaiian Bank’s annual giving marked a 16% increase over the prior year, after the company posted a 20% increase in corporate profits in 2025.

Bob Harrison, chairman, president and CEO of the bank, says he has made a priority of building a culture of service and connection to the community.

“You’re only as healthy an organization as the community you’re in,” Harrison says. “You can’t have a healthy, strong bank in a community that’s not doing well. So, the more we do to help the community, the better off the bank is, and the whole community gets better, too. I mean, that’s how we’ve always looked at that connection.”

He says the bank’s contributions fall into three broad categories – education, health and human services, and culture and the arts – with distributions shifting each year between those depending on needs. The Blood Bank of Hawaii, Dynamic Community Solutions, Aloha United Way, American Cancer Society and University of Hawai‘i Foundation were its top five recipients.

Harrison says that while 2025 was a more typical year with few natural disasters, the current year has already posed significant challenges to the state’s corporate donors as well as government.

“How much can we do? Because so much of this is really government stuff, and the mayor gets it, and the governor gets it. The hardening of all of our infrastructure isn’t just a private company issue,” he says. “With the frequency, it’s going to be hard to keep up the cadence of everytime something happens. We need to, but there’s going to be hard decisions.”

As for filling gaps from cuts to federal funding of programs starting in 2027, he says Hawai‘i institutions will step up.

“We’re all going to help,” he says. “We’re not going to let people drop through the cracks. So it’s going to be on the Hawai‘i community, and the business community is going to be asked to step up in a lot of the situations.”

In addition to the corporate giving in 2025, First Hawaiian Bank’s 1,961 employees contributed 7,362 hours of their personal time outside of company hours plus an astounding $886,450 of their own money for charitable organizations.

Kayla Smith, Marketing Programs Officer. Photo courtesy of First Hawaiian Bank

The bank’s employees operate a unique charitable giving plan, called Kōkua Mai, with employee participation rates exceeding 99%, according to Kayla Smith, the marketing programs officer who coordinates the activities and fundraising.

“That says everything to me about the culture of the bank, you know, how important it is for us collectively,” Harrison says about the high participation rate. “The management team is one thing, the foundation, etcetera. But everybody [at the bank] thinks it’s really important to give back.”

During the kickoff to the monthlong giving campaign that lasts throughout October, dozens of nonprofits set up tables at the bank’s Honolulu headquarters for an event that allows employees to become familiar with their charitable and service work. The employees then make decisions on which nonprofits will receive their individual donations, and the bank’s only official role is to assist with administrative tasks such as payroll deductions.

The meetings help make a personal connection with recipient charities.

“Employees can stop by, meet nonprofits, chat about their mission, kind of see where their proceeds are going, put a face to the name,” Smith says.

Asked how she keeps participation rates so high, she reveals a deep understanding of motivation techniques for high-achieving employees: Tap their competitive spirit and see which department can donate the most.

“It’s just become a little bit of a competitive thing for Kōkua Mai, like departments putting on fundraisers to see who can get to their monetary goal and participation first. … So it’s been fun to see it come to life. They kind of take it on themselves, and they’re coming to me excited.”

Smith has her own competitive streak, a holdover from her days as an offensive player on her college lacrosse team. She sees a resemblance to workplace competition – one for a good cause. “I would say definitely,” there are similarities, she says. “We have a lot of competition within our team … It is a fun atmosphere. It’s a different perspective for sure, coming from sports. But similar in a way.”

The Nakupuna Companies in Second Place

The Nakupuna Companies, a Native Hawaiian Organization–owned family of businesses, leapfrogged from the No. 6 spot last year to No. 2 with total contributions of $5.11 million. The companies are dedicated to advancing the Native Hawaiian community through partnerships, programs and targeted investments.

With a stated goal of increasing economic opportunities for the Native Hawaiian community, it steered donations toward organizations with a shared mission: Ke Ali‘i Pauahi Foundation, the Polynesian Voyaging Society, Mālama Loko Ea Foundation, Institute for Native Pacific Education and Culture (INPEACE), University of Hawai‘i Foundation

For its part, No. 3 corporate donor Matson, which has been the state’s most profitable company for the last five years, contributed $5.1 million to charities in 2025, a sizeable amount but also a second year of decline for the company. That’s in part reflected in the tough financial conditions the shipping and logistics firm faced last year due to shifting trade patterns in response to U.S.-imposed tariffs.

Even so, the company says it remains committed to giving back to the community, with contributions to maritime environment and ocean resource conservation, education, human services, culture and arts, and civic and community programs among its target recipients.

“One of the pillars of Matson’s corporate culture has been a long-standing tradition of community involvement based upon a desire to improve the quality of life where we do business and where our employees live and work,” said Matt Cox, chairman and CEO of Matson, on it’s Community Giving webpage.

In the No. 4 corporate donor position is the combined Alaska Airlines/Hawaiian Airlines, in its first full year after its merger, with $4.8 million in cash and in-kind contributions. The bulk of that total, $4.1 million, was attributed to in-kind contributions, including using flight credits as a type of valuable currency.

In December, Hawaiian Airlines awarded 500,000 Atmos mileage points to each of its 14 local nonprofits that rely on air travel to deliver essential services across the Hawaiian Islands and beyond.

“Our nonprofit partners uplift our communities in extraordinary ways, often traveling between islands to serve keiki, kūpuna, families and ecosystems that depend on their care,” says Debbie Nakanelua-Richards, director of community and cultural relations at Hawaiian Airlines on the company website. “We are honored to celebrate our new Atmos Rewards loyalty program by furthering our support for organizations that give so much to Hawai‘i – this is one way we can give back to them.”

On the nonprofit side, the second-largest donor, University of Hawai‘i Foundation, with $73.4 million in cash contributions, lists parts of the University of Hawai‘i system operations as its top recipients – University of Hawai‘i programs, research and students.

First Hawaiian Bank employees gathered at a charity event. Photo courtesy of First Hawaiian Bank

New Challenges for Charities

Philanthropic giving faces challenges across the country, with needs outstripping private resources, and Hawai‘i is no exception.

In 2025, overall charitable giving fell nearly 7% in the year, according to the companies and nonprofits that voluntarily report their largesse in the Hawaii Business Magazine survey. In general, these organizations have every reason to boast about their generosity. So if it is declining, there’s likely an underlying reason.

Charitable giving is a lagging indicator of the national economy, says Kamran Razvan, CEO of Virginia-based Click & Pledge (clickandpledge.com), a global online payment processing- and donor-management platform for nonprofits, including some in Hawai‘i. As a result, if charitable giving is declining, that means the economy is already slowing down.

“Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I have 10 dollars, to whom should I give it?’” he says. “Now, let’s think about all that is happening. Gas prices right now are at an all-time high, grocery bills, everything is essentially going up. So, consumer analysts tell us all of what’s left for charity is going to be affected negatively.

“Now, another thing this administration has done, from what we have learned, is that anything that is environmental, gender-related, women’s health-related, everything that we essentially worked the last 100 years to become better at – it’s cut.”

Not only is government funding being cut, Razvan says, but it has an impact on large corporate and philanthropic donors.

“Big donors are being affected because the huge foundations and others that give funds for diversity, equal rights, gender equality, they get penalized. So, we’ve been told by organizations that deal with women’s health, birth control, abortion or essentially women’s reproductive health, their funding has been cut tremendously, because even the big donors are shying away from donating, because they get penalized for doing it.”

First Hawaiian Bank’s Harrison, who is also an advisory council member for the Federal Reserve Bank’s 12th District council, says the U.S. economy is currently “doing incredibly well.”

“There are a lot of things to worry about, and we talk about them all the time, and the war and the cost of energy, and all those are real things, the potential overspend in AI, AI infrastructure – but it’s hard to bet against the U.S. economy right now.”

Ka‘uhane says some economic indicators are misleading, including the state’s unemployment numbers, which she says are deceptively low.

“Our unemployment rate is considered by several standards that we are fully employed,” she says. “So what the numbers say and what is real on the ground, it’s always a masked number because oftentimes people are working two or three jobs … I mean, even two adults working in the household is not always enough. And so, I think that whatever percent unemployment rate that they say we have – there is a story that goes with that number on why it looks that way, but we’re holding multiple jobs down in order to survive here.”

Razvan suggests that federal tax changes to increase the standard deduction, which for an individual have risen from $6,300 before Trump’s first term to more than $16,000 now, has caused some individuals to stop donating to charitable causes. Tax benefits that spurred some people to give have been eroded.

That affects middle-class donors, perhaps, but not the large donors that give to Hawai‘i Community Foundation, says Ka‘uhane. Big donors are still making ongoing commitments.

Smaller organizations in the state are feeling the pinch, however.

The Hawai‘i Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations (HANO), says 5,982 nonprofits are financially active in the state, employing more than 1 in 10 Hawai‘i workers. But its latest assessment, “Insights from Hawai‘i’s Nonprofits 2026,” shows that demand for services and funds continues to outpace capacity to deliver.

According to the report, 63% of state nonprofits report an increase in demand for services, while 61% do not expect to meet demand in the coming year.

That is in line with expectations for charitable giving across the board – demand, both for emergencies and ongoing sustainability, is outstripping supply.

With federal government approved cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, set to take effect in the months ahead, Hawai‘i and other states will be scrambling to fill the gaps.

“By no means is philanthropy equipped with the kind of dollars that government pumps into those things,” says HCF’s Ka‘uhane. “And so yeah, it’s a little scary.”

Ka’uhane says Hawai‘i Community Foundation has begun focusing more efforts on preparatory work that can help mitigate the need for disaster relief and community resilience programs.

The Stronger Hawai‘i Initiative “is really to say, how do we think more deeply about all four phases of disaster preparedness, rapid response, stabilization, and then long term recovery?”

“How do we make those grants not just in response to the incident? We’ve started to make grants earlier in the process. So, we’re giving dollars to nonprofits before the incident happens. … How do we make sure that we are really leaning into preparedness? Social impact and our Stronger Hawaii Initiative really were big areas of focus.”

The complete Most Charitable Companies list appears exclusively in the November print issue of Hawaii Business Magazine.

Order your copy here.