Giving Runs in the Family

The Goodale Family Fund Will Serve Kaua‘i for Generations

Hobey and Nancy Goodale established their first donor-advised fund with HCF in 1997.

The Goodales have always been givers. Holbrook “Hobey” Goodale and his wife Nancy grew up in philanthropic households and passed that tradition onto their own children. In 1997, the Goodales established their first donor-advised fund with the Hawai‘i Community Foundation. The family fund has since distributed over $780,000 to deserving organizations on Kaua‘i, including schools, performing arts groups, conservation initiatives, and historical organizations.

Hobey and Nancy weren’t content to merely write checks; they volunteered on the hospital board, helped the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) with accounting, and even pitched in with the yard work at Island School. “Island School was near and dear to dad’s heart,” says the Goodales’ daughter, Kathy Richardson. “He spent many hours volunteering there.”

Janet Mayfield, the CEO of NTBG, remembers working with Hobey in the late ’90s. She was the Garden’s controller then, and Hobey was chair of the finance committee. “He’d come every Tuesday morning and go over the financials. We’d finish that in 15 minutes and then he’d regale me with stories. He had extraordinary stories of the old ranching days,” says Mayfield. “He was a really humble, unassuming person.”

The Goodale Family Fund supports the Garden’s education programs, summer camps and school visits. “We’re able to pay for buses, which is a really big deal, because sometimes schools don’t have bus money,” says Mayfield.

When Nancy passed, the family started a second fund. The Nancy Sloggett Goodale Fund supports Grove Farm Homestead Museum, the plantation estate in Līhu‘e where she lived as a child during World War II. The hundred-acre property preserves the feel of the bygone sugar plantation days. “People on the farm tours basically go back in time,” says Richardson.

Richardson says that her parents “got to share in the joy of giving to community projects and seeing the outcome of their donations.” They enabled the next generation to do the same: Richardson and her sister Joan Evans, and their brothers David Goodale and Richard Goodale continue to contribute to their fund. They also gather as a family to decide upon organizations and programs to give to, based on their family values. This past year, they honored their parents by donating $25,000 to Wilcox Medical Center for a new emergency room. Richardson says, “It’s a family thing the four of us do together.”

Read more Stories of Impact