The game changer

The game changer

By Anna Hrushka – Reporter, Pacific Business News Jan 4, 2019, 10:00am EST

Micah Kāne stepped into the role of CEO and president of the Hawaii Community Foundation in 2017, replacing Kelvin Taketa, who held the position for nearly 20 years.

As the new head of the 102-year-old philanthropic organization, Kāne is quick to mention that his leadership style is different from Taketa, who in Kāne’s words, was an “iconic” leader.

“He was a very strong leader,” Kāne told Pacific Business News. “But we were very dependent on that one leader. I’m not that kind of leader. I view myself more as a downfield blocker than the one who needs to carry the football to the end zone. I focus on just making sure we have the best team and creating institutional muscle that’s not so reliant on just one leader. I think that’s important.”

Part of Kāne’s idea of leadership is making sure his vision for the organization is understood and shared both internally and externally.

That leadership style has led Kāne to spearhead HCF’s “CHANGE Framework,” an initiative he created to help Hawaii’s leaders and people better understand the community and its areas of need.

“We believe that if people can better understand how we’re performing across a set of common metrics, then there’s a better chance of us collaborating toward solving some of Hawaii’s problems,” Kāne said.

Those six metrics make up each letter of CHANGE: community and economy; health and welfare; arts and culture; natural environment; government and civics; and education.

Kāne said the initiative is meant to help identify gaps and opportunities in each area, sectors which are underperforming or in need of attention.

HCF first introduced the initiative at the 2017 Hawaii Executive Conference, an invitationonly event that convenes business leaders throughout various industries to discuss solutions that would strengthen the state’s future.

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Hawaii businessman Duane Kurisu, whose nonprofit aio Foundation runs the conference, agreed to adopt the CHANGE Framework platform as a means by which the conference measures its work.

“It was very important to Duane that when he took over the conference, that it will be a conference that was focused on getting these leaders to focus on driving change that makes Hawaii a better place,” Kāne said. “He needed a platform and he was willing to give this platform a shot.”

Kāne said the initiative also consists of an “off conference” strategy, where over 100 leaders in the state’s public and private sectors are convening three to four times over the next nine months around the CHANGE Framework.

“They are identifying and getting educated about where the opportunities for CHANGE sit,” Kāne said. “They will come to the conference in October and convene again.

Hopefully, what comes out of that is some prioritization around where Hawaii really needs to get its best opportunities.”

A good listener HCF President Deborah Berger, who is a co-founder of the Learning Coalition, was chair of the HCF during its search for Taketa’s replacement.

“We were looking for somebody who was a very inclusive leader, who knew how to listen to the community and that knew the community well,” Berger told PBN. “I think his background provided us with the confidence that he had those skills and the values of listening to communities. That was very compelling to us.”

Before joining the HCF as the organization’s third president and CEO, Kāne served as its president and chief operating officer, as well as a member of the board of governors for eight years.

Kāne’s career has touched both the private and public sectors and includes roles as chief operating officer of Pacific Links International and chair of the Hawaiian Homes Commission and the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

PBN sat down with Kāne to discuss the challenges facing Hawaii nonprofits, his goals and vision for the organization and the issues that keep him up at night.

During your time on the HCF board, would you say you were being groomed for the top position?

While I think I had an inside track, being the internal candidate, the board still did a national search. I competed for that and was fortunate enough to be selected. … I think I was given the opportunity to be groomed. I feel very fortunate that Kelvin [Taketa] gave me that opportunity. I wouldn’t be here if not for him. I think he saw that I had a passion

for Hawaii and that I could hopefully continue what he started, which is what I’m trying to do.

What excites you about this job?

I’m more excited today than I was when I got the job 18 months ago, about the opportunity for our organization to have an impact on Hawaii at an extremely critical time in our history, a time when I think we’re ripe to really drive toward some change that’s going to allow Hawaii to really capitalize on what is still is our competitive advantage in the world. … I’m excited about the capacity that this organization has and the potential it has to make a difference in Hawaii. That’s what drives me. That desire to elevate our floor so that everyone can benefit from what’s so great about this place. And I think it’s becoming clearer today than even it was 18 months ago, and 18 months before that, that there are some areas that we need to focus on. I think we have the tools in our tool chest as a place to do that. I think the leaders are starting to surface that are thinking more collectively than individually around how Hawaii has an opportunity, that we are in a special time to do some good work.

What are those specific areas?

An example I’ll give is [Bank of Hawaii CEO] Peter Ho. A year and a half ago, I’m not sure you would have heard the CEO of Bank of Hawaii talk about the Alice Report. … I’m not sure there’s another state where the CEO of one of the largest banks is stepping up and talking about some of the challenges a community is facing around the out-migration of the middle class and the dissolving of the middle class and what that means to Hawaii. It creates an opportunity for a different audience to pay attention, to listen. I think what you’re seeing with Duane Kurisu in Kahauiki and the work he did to service homeless families — his project is going to service 60 percent of the homeless families on Oahu — it’s amazing. I’m not sure you would have seen that a year and a half to three years ago. I think all of this is being driven through various networks that is somewhat affiliated to the CHANGE Framework. Those are just examples of how I think people are thinking beyond their silos and recognizing that, while people might have a certain special interest in a sector because their business is there, it’s all interrelated. … At the end of the day, when you go home each day, you want to know how your community is performing across all six sectors, not just whether or not my schools are performing well. I think the role we can play is to help bring that convening of thought and leadership toward really advancing some of our most difficult challenges. We think hard about that, we talk a lot about it, and we act on it. We’re building the muscle here to go after that. I’m excited about it.

HCF's HousingASAP initiative is a network of nonprofit organizations that have partnered together to place over 650 homeless families in permanent housing.

COURTESY HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION What has been the biggest surprise so far?

I didn’t realize how complex the work was behind the curtain, which makes articulating what we do much more difficult as an organization. We’re a big fish in a small pond. We’re

a 100-plus year-old organization, one of the oldest in the country, one of the largest in the country, but in an economy and in a community that is fairly small. You have an opportunity to leverage that toward greater impact. But behind that curtain it’s pretty complex, transactional type of work that occurs across multiple places. We have a book of business that is very foundation history-oriented that deals with the legacies of hundreds and hundreds of people who have left their resources to us to administer their dreams over time. We also have this book of business that is evolving as wealth has been handed to younger people who want to make a difference in their lives now — completely different interests. But our job is to bring that interest together so that it’s focused on things that are more impactful versus diluted across areas. That’s kind of the complexity that we need to work on behind the curtain so that when we get out in front, people can see that by partnering with us there is an opportunity to make a difference.

Why is the CHANGE Framework so important to you?

We feel strongly that if we can be talking off the same sheet of music, we can coordinate our efforts better. [CHANGE] was created to help articulate where our focuses need to be.

For example, community and economy, we unpack this sector by three sub sectors. Why are these metrics important? There’s a reason for it. Where is our $14.4 billion state budget being spent? How is it being spent across these sectors? I don’t think it would surprise anybody that a large portion of our money sits in our health and welfare arena and education. But I think people would be surprised that in the arts, where we have the greatest potential, our least amount of investment is being spent. It makes sense because when people cut, you tend to cut those pieces there, you go into the public system and they cut art and PE before they cut English. It makes sense. But what does that mean to the kid that’s coming out of school? Where are they going to reinvest their talents if they haven’t been exposed to some things that make Hawaii special? … If I’m going to have a conversation with [American Savings Bank Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer] Rob Nobriga as the president of Tradewind Capital, I’m not only interested in what his philanthropic dollars are, but as a company that is focused on investing in Hawaii solely, how are they investing across this framework? Because they’re basically one big social impact investor. How do we come together so that we can leverage their balance sheet beyond just philanthropic money? If I was to say that there’s one North Star that I hope we can get to, it is to convince those companies that are really interested in moving Hawaii forward, that we can align those balance sheets. I think that’s one of our greatest competitive advantages in Hawaii, because we are the world’s biggest village and we can come together. It can be a positive, not a negative.

What are some of your goals for the organization?

Part of our effort is a stronger focus on the Neighbor Islands. While we’re a fairly large fish in a small pond, we still don’t have the resources, capacity or influence to drive a statewide change on some of our biggest issues. Issues around affordable housing, we think can best be solved within counties, where scalable policy is. We’re going to be hyper focusing on some of the more county-wide issues and pivoting in our organization from one that is driving the agenda from Honolulu to be more letting the agenda be driven from the community perspective and aligning our resources to better support that.

It has been an eventful year in Hawaii, in terms of natural disasters. How have those events impacted HCF? You learn things about yourself when you get hit with a disaster. It was tough. We tried to not put things on pause, but it definitely challenged us. But we learned a lot about what role we can play in those times and what type of muscle we needed to build to be able to react faster next time. So, we’re having conversations with county leadership and multiple conversations with Honolulu Mayor [Kirk] Caldwell about how we can position HCF to be a lever for him in a time of disaster. How can we advance agreements so that we can accelerate funding into nonprofits and how do we build some capacity in areas where we see we missed? We are having conversations about that on every island. My hope is that those agreements can be in place in 2019 so that there’s better confidence in being able to respond to those greatest in need when a disaster hits. … The biggest issue is manpower.

We see opportunities to work with the unions in terms of being able to utilize their benches. They’re very skilled people. I’m excited about conversations there.

What kind of legislative issues does HCF advocate for?

We’re advocating more, but we’re advocating in places that make sense. We’re doing a lot of work around freshwater right now, as well as work around behavioral health and understanding that sector. We are also doing a lot of work in education. We’re working closely with the [Hawaii State Department of Education] superintendent [Christina Kishimoto]. We like her. She’s got great gumption. We hope we can help her advance some of her initiatives. What I like about what she’s doing is, she looks at her rearview mirror and she acknowledges the progress we’re making, because we have made progress. You don’t see many leaders do that. They don’t look in the rearview mirror and give accolades where they’re deserved.

Enlarge Over the past 15 years, HCF has distributed more than $35 million in grants to protect and sustain Hawaii's environment and its natural resources, such as the Malama Loko Ea fish pond in Haleiwa. Through grants from the foundation, volunteers were able to clear 5 tons of invasive… more COURTESY HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION

Do you have any mentors?

Oh, yeah. I think the greatest thing about finding mentors is being a good mentee, too. I’m very fortunate that many of them are on my board and were friends before I got this position. Some are external, some are family, like my wife. I’m very fortunate. I don’t feel lonely. Sometimes leading can get pretty lonely and you’ve got to make some hard decisions. But I feel like I’m surrounded by some pretty cool people that care about the same things.

What do you want the business community to know about HCF’s work?

The nonprofit group is one key sector of our work. That is a role we’re allowed to play because laws allow us to do it. People can allocate money to nonprofits with tax incentives to do that. And it can do services government is not able to do. That’s one piece of it. But the piece we’re trying to get to, is to align for-profit work with a Hawaii cause. That’s the pivot that I think we have to make as a community. We have to get outside of the traditional focus that it’s nonprofit work. Because it’s not. Affordable housing is not nonprofit work. It’s our work as a place. It’s as much Bank of Hawaii’s work as it is selfhelp housing’s work because it’s their people that are going to be living in those homes.

When you have that balance sheet focus, then you’ve got something.

HCF by the numbers Assets under administration: Over $700 million Grants awarded in 2017: $59 million, including $6 million in scholarships.

Funds: Over 900 funds, including over 250 scholarship funds, established by individuals, businesses, organizations Age: 102 years old