Statewide disaster philanthropy network launched by Funder Hui

Funder Hui, Hawaiʻi’s regional philanthropy-serving organization, is expanding its disaster-response network statewide.

Hawaiʻi Resilience & Recovery Funder Collaborative now includes more than 35 funders who will coordinate disaster giving through a single shared nonprofit application — similar to the Common App used by colleges.

Nonprofits fill out the application once and make it available to multiple funders instead of completing separate applications for each one.

The collaborative is not a collective or pooled fund.

It is grounded in principles of trust-based philanthropy and community-centered decision-making.

Participating funders are aligned around:

• Simplifying how organizations share their work with funders.
• Aligning fund deployment for immediate and emerging needs.
• Increasing transparency and coordination across funders.

“Disaster response requires both speed and coordination,” said Funder Hui Director Ashley Lukens in a release. “This lets us move beyond fragmented approaches and toward a model rooted in alignment, trust and accountability to the communities we serve.”

Each funder still decides independently how to give. What they share is infrastructure: the same core information about grantee organizations, gathered once instead of repeatedly.

That shared view is meant to help funders coordinate faster and target resources to communities hit hardest by a disaster.

As climate-driven emergencies grow more frequent throughout the islands, nonprofits often juggle multiple applications, reporting systems and timelines while responding to urgent community needs on the ground — usually with the least capacity to spare for paperwork.

Hawaiʻi Resilience & Recovery Funder Collaborative is built to cut that burden by giving funders a shared, streamlined way to see an organization’s work, needs and impact so resources move faster to the communities that need them.

“The way we fund disaster response in Hawaiʻi must evolve to meet the scale and urgency of this moment,” Lukens said. “The collaborative gives us a coordinated system that reduces strain on nonprofits and gets resources to communities when and where they’re needed most.”

The statewide model builds on the Maui Recovery Funders Collaborative, which ran a full year of coordinated funding through a common application process before moving under Funder Hui.

That effort brought funders from throughout Hawaiʻi together around an open application process and expanding into joint requests for proposals targeting recovery priorities such as mental health and food security. The 2026 transition to Funder Hui is also intended to draw new funders into continued investment into Maui’s long-term recovery.

Funder Hui will operate both collaboratives in parallel for now, with plans to eventually merge them into a single disaster-focused effort under the shared application process.

“During disaster response, every hour matters and paperwork can slow down critical work,” said Nuestro Futuro Foundation Executive Director and Funder Hui Advisory Board Member Abigail Perrin in the release. “Having one application that multiple funders can access means we spend less time managing forms and more time serving our communities.”