A Focus on Equity
The Hawaiʻi Community Foundation created the CHANGE Framework to better understand and address the most critical, complex challenges facing our community. By categorizing the needs of Hawai‘i’s people and places into six essential sectors, we can identify how and where financial resources, expertise, and collective effort can make the most significant impact in improving outcomes across our state.
Our goal with the CHANGE Framework has been to tackle Hawaiʻi’s greatest challenges, grounded in the belief that, if we, as a community, use common data, agree on shared goals, and take collective action, we can address systemic inequities by dismantling the broken systems we currently operate in.
The CHANGE Framework serves as a tool for the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation to outline the steps necessary to fulfill our mission, to inspire generosity, advocate for equity, forge connections, and invest in community. However, CHANGE doesn’t belong only to us—we have co-developed visions for each sector of the CHANGE Framework with community input to chart a course for our future. We invite everyone in Hawaiʻi to join us on this journey.
Below, you’ll find links to pages for each of the CHANGE sectors, which include an overview of the current challenges in each sector, specific strategies for achieving positive change, ways to get involved, and other useful information.
Community Convenings for CHANGE
One of the core tenets of trust-based philanthropy is that funders should “ask and act” on feedback. In that spirit, HCF staff held Community Convenings in 2022 through 2024 to solicit perspectives on the CHANGE Framework—from the struggle to gather data that accurately represent the challenges facing Hawai‘i to the strategies that will be most effective in making positive change. Nonprofits and community leaders across the state were invited to participate in a variety of gatherings, including open-house events, site visits, face-to-face meetings, and virtual convenings.
Using all the community feedback received during the convenings, we’ve created a long-term vision and set of strategies for each sector that reflect the expertise and perspective of those doing systems-change work throughout Hawai‘i.