HCF taps Kane to be CEO

May 11, 2017 |

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Hawaii Community Foundation taps Kane to be CEO

By Andrew Gomes Posted May 11, 2017 May 11, 2017

BRUCE ASATO / BASATO@STARADVERTISER.COM Hawaii Community Foundation Chief Executive Officer Kelvin Taketa, left, and HCF President Micah Kane spoke Tuesday about their upcoming personnel changes at the company. Taketa will step down as CEO July 1, with Kane taking the helm.

Hawaii’s largest charitable foundation, which distributes roughly $50 million annually from hundreds of small and large donors, will have a new locally grown and groomed

chief executive following an effort that looked nationally for a new leader.

The board of the Hawaii Community Foundation has selected the organization’s president, Micah Kane, to succeed CEO Kelvin Taketa, who informed the board in December that he would retire after 19 years at the helm of the nonprofit overseeing more than $600 million in assets.

The change will be effective July 1.

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HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION >> Established: 1916 >> Assets in 2016: $615 million >> Distributions in 2016: $47 million

Kane, a Kamehameha Schools trustee and former director of the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands who joined HCF as president early last year, will become only the third CEO of the foundation. It was established in 1916 and administered by a trust company for most of its history.

Taketa, 63, said Kane was the right selection for the job.

“It’s the right time for a change in leadership,” said Taketa, who plans to work part time on strategic initiatives for the foundation after retiring. “Micah’s the right guy. He has the right set of experiences.”

Kane’s pay package has yet to be finalized and therefore wasn’t disclosed. The most recent public records show Taketa earned $509,000 in salary and benefits as president

and CEO in 2015.

Kane, 48, had been an HCF board member for eight years when Taketa encouraged him to consider leaving a job running the golf course investment firm Pacific Links International and becoming president with the potential to win the CEO position that Taketa then envisioned giving up within two years.

“No matter how good you are, no matter how great the organization is doing, organizations need (change),” he said. “Just like plants, you got to be repotted from time to time, and that’s part of the vigor that gives growth to an organization and that’s what HCF needs.”

When Taketa joined HCF in 1998, the foundation had $265 million in assets and distributed $8 million. That grew to $615 million and $47 million, respectively, as of last year.

The foundation’s assets are made up of nearly 800 funds established by individuals, companies and other entities that often direct HCF to make their money available to specific groups or for specific purposes.

Examples include initiatives to improve fresh water supplies, health, homelessness, culture, technology and education. Of the close to 800 funds, 200 are college scholarships either available to applicants broadly or specific groups defined by place of residence, the high school they attend, ancestry, the employer of a parent, the major they pursue or other things.

HCF provided $4.7 million in scholarship money to about 1,400 students last year.

Taketa said one great thing about the job he has loved is that people who don’t have a ton of money to give away set up funds that benefit others and create a legacy that often memorializes a touching personal story.

“A lot of people think that we only work with the super rich,” he said, “but the reality is some of the greatest stories that we have are about a woman (Ellen Hamada) who is a seamstress who takes her life savings and sets up a scholarship fund so that kids can go to fashion school, or this couple (Teruo and Adeline Ogawa) who worked down in Kalaupapa their whole lives and then when they die they set up the first scholarship fund that we’ve ever had to support a kid to go to college from Molokai.”

One $55,000 grant made by HCF about five years ago sent a delegation to South Korea to pitch the International Union for Conservation of Nature to hold its conference in Hawaii, which led to the organization doing just that.

“Little things can make a big difference,” Taketa said.

Of course wealthy donors also make big impacts. One such donor was local

construction industry executive Robert E. Black, who left HCF about $60 million upon his death in 1987, which also led to the set of funds originally established as The Hawaiian Foundation hiring its first CEO, Jane Renfro Smith, in 1988 after decades of administration by Hawaiian Trust Co. Other megagifts have been left by original “Hawaii Five-0” star Jack Lord and his wife, Marie, who left HCF $40 million directed to a dozen charities, and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who contributed $50 million.

HCF establishes about 50 new funds a year for donors, and a varying number of funds also end each year.

Kane, who was selected after a committee of board members and former board chairpersons assisted by executive search firm Inkinen and Associates looked at candidates nationally, said he feels a great weight to continue the foundation’s growth and work taking over from Taketa. “We just want to do a lot of the same and more of it,” he said.

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