Nearly $130 million in federal grants to Hawai‘i nonprofits is at risk of funding cuts, warns the University of Hawai‘i.
A report by the UH Economic Research Organization released Thursday found that 74 federal grants — together worth $126 million — to nonprofits in the state are “politically vulnerable” and potentially subject to cuts, based on the continuing mission of the presidential administration to slash federal spending.
UHERO Executive Director Carl Bonham said Thursday that many of the grants deemed politically vulnerable involve or mention terms that the President Donald Trump administration has targeted, such as DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) or Native Hawaiian rights.
The bulk of these at-risk grants are to healthcare-related organizations, with some $64 million in unpaid funding for various medical services that could be rescinded with little to no warning. Other sectors, such as housing and human services, also seem to be prime targets for cuts.
The report noted that only 201 out of the roughly 8,200 registered nonprofits in Hawai‘i received direct federal grants in the 2025 fiscal year, and that nonprofit grants as a whole make up only a relatively small share of the federal government’s overall social spending.
Nonetheless, Bonham said that, between the risk of these cuts and ongoing cuts to Medicaid, there is a compounded strain on Hawai‘i's social safety net that is already being felt by the state’s vulnerable.
Mary Scott-Lau, founder of the nonprofit Women In Need, said her organization has already had to close one women’s shelter on Kaua‘i — “the only clean and sober house we have on the island,” she said — and has laid off half its employees.
The report was commissioned by the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, which announced earlier this week that more than $97 million in federal funds to Hawai‘i nonprofits have already cut or delayed.
In the face of these cuts, HCF announced Tuesday that it is reactivating its Hawai‘i Resilience Fund, a COVID-era pot of money funded through donations to attempt to keep nonprofits running.
HCF CEO Terry George admitted in a Thursday media conference that “philanthropic dollars can’t replace federal dollars,” and that the Resilience Fund will only be a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of federal dollars on the chopping block. He said that HCF hopes to have at least $1.8 million available in the fund by the end of the month.
HCF program director Justine Acevedo-Cross said the Resilience funds will be used to assist nonprofits in restructuring in order to remain operational. One of the two grants already awarded through the Resilience fund was a $46,000 grant to UHERO to commission the report released on Thursday.
Michelle Bartell, CEO of Aloha United Way, said some of the federal funding cuts could be successfully challenged and overturned in court, but that isn’t reliable enough for nonprofits to plan around it. Even if the court does restore a particular grant, it could take months for those funds to finally return to the nonprofit, and still longer before it helps people in need.
