Grants from Windward Nonprofit Go Back to the Community
By Staff Reports
(KAILUA)– — The Harold K.L. Castle Foundation announced today that it has made grants totaling $168,541,264 since its inception 50 years ago. That amount equates to 2,345 different checks being cut to Hawaii nonprofit organizations and schools.
The state’s largest private foundation, which is based in Kailua, focuses its investments on public education redesign and enhancement, nearshore marine resource conservation and strengthening the communities of Windward Oahu. More than $58 million has gone to organizations serving Windward Oahu. Currently, the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation disburses an average of $6 million in grants per year.
The State of Hawaii approved the charter of incorporation of the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation on December 21, 1962, four years after statehood. In August 1963, the Foundation made its first set of grants. In 2013, it will be marking 50 years of grantmaking.
“What a gift Harold Castle has left for our children, families and communities of Hawaii,” said Terry George, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation. “I continue to marvel at the generosity of Mr. Castle and his family and at the power of a perpetually endowed foundation to do good in this world.”
Upon Harold K.L. Castle’s death in 1967, he bequeathed a sizeable portion of his Kailua real estate assets to the Foundation. Those assets, currently valued at $162 million, are the base from which the Foundation’s grants are made.
For more information on the history of the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation and its grant giving, visit www.castlefoundation.org.