Richard Smart Fund grants $500,000 to 29 Waimea programs

The Richard Smart Fund is sending $500,000 to 29 Waimea programs, adding a new round of support for culture, education, health and safety work that reaches across Waimea and the wider North Hawaii side. The latest awards extend a 25-year funding stream that has become one of the area’s most durable sources of local philanthropic investment.

Since the fund was established in 2001 through the Parker Ranch Foundation Trust, it has distributed $8.65 million to 108 nonprofits serving Waimea. That long record matters because it shows the fund is not operating as a one-time grant cycle but as a steady channel for returning local resources to the community year after year.

Michelle Pope, Hawai‘i Island program officer for the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, said the fund has consistently supported organizations that care about Waimea’s future and that the work continues to evolve. The current priorities include culturally grounded health care, āina stewardship and housing, a sign that the money is being steered toward basic needs and long-term community stability as much as toward enrichment programs.

The grantees will again be brought together as a learning cohort, a structure the foundation refined in 2023 with guidance from the Waimea Community Weaving Hui, a local advisory group. That approach is intended to connect the organizations funded by the Richard Smart Fund, which range from water safety education and youth mentorship to reforestation, children’s education concerts, midwifery pathways and a beekeeper legacy project. The mix shows how the money is being used in practical, place-based ways rather than through broad statewide initiatives.

For Waimea, the grants add to an infrastructure of services that touches children, families, cultural practitioners and the organizations helping to hold the community together. The awards also underscore how central Waimea remains to North Hawaii’s social network, with local philanthropy aimed at strengthening resilience, cultural continuity and the systems residents rely on most.