Foundations
donate to isle
jobs effort

They challenge businesses
to join in

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Five non-profit foundations have joined forces in donations to the Oahu Economic Development Board that will finance bigger efforts to get grants that will create jobs on Oahu.

And they issued a challenge today to businesses to kick in also, in what they hope will be a $270,000 fund.

"We call it capacity building," said Robert F. Mougeot, chairman of non-profit development board. The money will allow the board, made up mostly of private business with representation from the city, to gear up to seek money from outside sources.

That money, in turn, will fund business development.

The foundations came in because OEDB was able to tell them that "economic development is really important, critical to the community, so that we can in fact support the social programs that are necessary," Mougeot said.

He said relationships with the foundations started when the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation was successfully approached last year to help finance one program, the Sustainable Oahu Initiative put together by OEDB and the Hawaii Community Services Council.

They put in $50,000. This spring, the foundation was approached again and gave $20,000, with a promise of an additional $30,000 if private business would match, said Mougeot, whose job "in real life" as he puts it, is vice president and chief financial officer of Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc.

Some businesses put in money too and some members of the volunteer OEDB board put in a few thousand.

"We have $95,000 so far" from foundations, Mougeot said, breaking it down this way:

Harold K. L. Castle Foundation, $20,000; Samuel and Mary Castle Foundation, $10,000; Atherton Family Foundation, $30,000; McInerny Foundation, $30,000; and the Frear Eleemosynary Foundation, $5,000.

"We're looking for another $45,000 (from the private sector) and then we can get another $30,000 from Castle. Castle is really here full-time," Mougeot said.

OEDB says it has created 300 jobs on Oahu since it was formed three years ago out of the former Economic Development Corp. of Honolulu.

Its mission is to put business, labor, foundations, community groups, government and educators together to find ways to encourage business development.

Its activities have included helping two other organizations to win a $400,000 federal grant last year, backed by $1.7 million in private money, to promote Hawaii in Asia as a center for health care.