Wo Hing Society

Wo Hing Society is not a general-purpose grantmaker — the DB and website evidence both point to it being a single-beneficiary support foundation built to fund one thing: Lahaina Restoration Foundation's (EIN 99-6004506) operation of the Wo Hing Museum in Lahaina, Maui. Of the only 3 grants captured in the DB (totaling $115,143 since inception of tracking), 2 grants worth $109,893 (95% of all recorded giving) went to Lahaina Restoration Foundation explicitly "to operate and maintain the Wo Hing Society Museum," and the third — $5,250 — went to Lahainaluna High School Foundation for graduating-senior scholarships. Both recipients sit within a few miles of each other in Lahaina and reflect the foundation's hyper-local, single-community footprint; there is no evidence in the grantee history, the financials, or the foundation's own website of a competitive or open grants program for outside applicants. All four listed officers — Carolyn Kam (President), Robert Santos (Vice President), Pamela Silva (Treasurer), and Jaclyn Santos (Secretary) — are uncompensated volunteers, another marker of a small, closely held family/community foundation rather than a staffed grantmaking institution. The DB flags accepting_applications as true, but application_instructions is literally "__none__" and there is no application_form_url or grants_page_url on file — that flag should be read as a data default, not a genuine open call. For organizations that are NOT Lahaina Restoration Foundation or a directly adjacent Lahaina cultural/educational institution, this is not a realistic funding target and outreach effort is better spent elsewhere. For organizations that genuinely sit inside this network — Maui Chinese-heritage preservation groups, Lahaina wildfire cultural-recovery partners, or Lahainaluna-area scholarship programs — the only viable path is a warm, relationship-first approach: a direct call to 808-315-6761 or the website contact form, introduced through an existing connection to LRF, Pamela Silva (listed foundation contact, doing business as "C/O Pamela D Silva"), or the Wo Hing/Lahaina Chinese community network, rather than a cold written proposal.

The DB's grantee-level history is thin by design: only 3 grants recorded, totaling $115,143, averaging $38,381 each, all disbursed to Hawaii-based recipients. At the recipient level, Lahaina Restoration Foundation received 2 grants worth $109,893 combined (average ~$54,947/grant) for museum operations, while Lahainaluna High School Foundation received a single $5,250 scholarship grant — indicating per-grant sizes likely range from roughly $5,000 at the low end to $50,000-plus at the high end. Total-giving figures from the underlying IRS filings show a foundation whose payout has been volatile and modest in absolute terms: $51,607 (FY2019), $244,406 (FY2020), $272,335 (FY2021), $467,939 (FY2022, the peak giving year), and $221,057 (FY2023); FY2024 giving was not yet reported. Actual grants_paid (a narrower cash-disbursement figure) ran $0 in FY2019-2020, then $35,918 (FY2021), $79,225 (FY2022), and $61,184 (FY2023) — averaging roughly $59,000/year across the three years with disbursements, well below total_giving, suggesting a meaningful share of "giving" in some years is non-grant charitable activity (e.g., direct museum operating costs) rather than third-party grants. The balance sheet tells a more dramatic story: total assets sat in the $150K-$775K range from 2019-2023, then jumped to $5,149,018 in FY2024 — a roughly 564% one-year increase far exceeding the year's $204,746 in reported revenue, almost certainly reflecting a post-wildfire insurance settlement, bequest, or restricted capital gift rather than organic investment growth (net investment income had never exceeded $383,367 in any prior year). Geographically and programmatically, 100% of tracked giving is concentrated in Hawaii and in Chinese-heritage/Lahaina cultural preservation — there is no diversification across program areas or states to analyze.

Wo Hing Society sits squarely in the middle of this asset-matched peer set — all five peers cluster within about $115,000 of each other in total assets ($5.10M-$5.21M) — but the DB does not carry giving figures for the peer foundations, so a direct payout-rate comparison isn't possible from this data alone. What does differentiate Wo Hing Society is transparency and specificity: it is the only one of the six with a public website, a named contact (Pamela Silva), and a documented, singular funding relationship (Lahaina Restoration Foundation), whereas none of the peers have a listed website except Pineland Farms Inc. and Clover Fields Preservation Foundation Inc. Application status for the peers is inferred, not confirmed — small Arts & Culture foundations at this asset size are statistically dominated by closely held family or single-purpose vehicles rather than open competitive grantmakers, and that pattern should be treated as a starting assumption for outreach, not a verified fact.

The dominant recent event for Wo Hing Society is the August 8, 2023 Lahaina wildfire, which destroyed the Wo Hing Society Hall and adjoining cookhouse — the 1912 Chinese Victorian buildings that Lahaina Restoration Foundation had operated as the Wo Hing Museum and a theater since a 1983 restoration agreement. The foundation's website (wohingfoundation.org) currently frames its public messaging almost entirely around that loss: it notes that "many of these records live on in digital format" (referencing roughly 2,000 archived records and artifacts that had been inventoried, translated, and digitized) and calls for community support, stating "we need to come together now to make sure our Museum and Temple have a bright future." No specific 2025-2026 rebuilding timeline, capital campaign target, or construction milestone is published on the site, and web searches turned up no press coverage, leadership changes, or new program announcements dated 2025 or 2026 — this appears to be a quiet, low-visibility foundation between major filings. The one concrete signal of change is financial: total assets reported for FY2024 ($5,149,018) are more than six times the FY2023 figure ($775,736), a jump that revenue alone cannot explain and that most plausibly reflects a large post-fire capital inflow (insurance proceeds, a major gift, or a restricted rebuilding fund) landing on the balance sheet ahead of any corresponding rebuild-related grant activity showing up in the grantee history yet.

There is effectively no conventional "application" to optimize for here, and grant seekers should calibrate expectations accordingly. First, verify fit before investing any effort: this foundation's only documented purpose is funding Lahaina Restoration Foundation's operation of the Wo Hing Museum, plus one scholarship grant to Lahainaluna High School Foundation — if your organization is not LRF, not directly supporting the Wo Hing Museum/Temple rebuild, and not a closely adjacent Lahaina educational or Chinese-heritage institution, this is not a realistic target and a written proposal is unlikely to be read by a grants committee (none appears to exist). Second, there is no LOI form, portal, deadline, or published funding cycle (application_instructions on file is literally blank/"__none__"), so the only real channel is direct human contact — call 808-315-6761 or use the contact form at wohingfoundation.org/contact, which explicitly asks interested parties to "let us know you are interested in making a donation or becoming a member or friend of the Wo Hing Society." Third, lead with relationship and cultural alignment rather than a formal ask: reference the society's identity as a historic "mutual relief society" for Maui's Chinese community, its founding by Chung Kung You and Chun Wa in the late 1800s, its role as a documented meeting place for Dr. Sun Yat-sen during the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, and its post-fire rebuilding mission — language that mirrors how the foundation describes itself is far more likely to land than generic grant-seeker phrasing. Fourth, the most common mistake would be treating this as a typical $5M-asset Arts & Culture foundation with an open door; its own numbers (3 grants total in the tracked history, all-volunteer unpaid officers, no grants staff) show it is not resourced or structured to run a competitive process. Fifth, if your organization is a wildfire-recovery or cultural-preservation partner working alongside Lahaina Restoration Foundation post-2023, that shared-mission entry point (through LRF itself, since it is the foundation's sole institutional grantee) is a stronger route in than approaching Wo Hing Society directly and cold.