Over the last seven years, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan have purchased 1,500 acres worth of land on Hawaii’s island of Kauai. They now own more of the island than the government of Kauai itself (975 acres).
Zuckerberg and Chan spent more than $170 million buying up Kauai acreage — a land grab that has been well documented in the national media. In an attempt to ingratiate themselves to their new home after a bumpy start to their Kauai residence, the pair has also poured millions of dollars into Kauai’s various nonprofit organizations through the Chan Zuckerberg Kauai Community Fund (CZKCF).
What’s resulted is a divided community: some are genuinely appreciative of the funding, some are skeptical and begrudgingly appreciative, and others say no amount of donations make up for buying a not-insignificant portion of the island.
The criticism and controversy started with a six-foot-high wall that Zuckerberg built around the Hawaii estate, blocking views and angering neighbors. Then in 2017, the couple drew worldwide attention when Zuckerberg filed quiet title lawsuits to gain ownership of 14 small parcels isolated within the boundaries of his Kauai property.
Wayne Rapozo, who lost one of those lawsuits claiming ancestral rights to parts of the couple’s Kauai property, counts himself a skeptic of their intentions.
“I commend Mark and Priscilla as well as Hawaii’s philanthropic professionals for such thoughtful donations. The gifts bear the stamp of Mark’s and Priscilla’s sense of purpose and vision as it overlaps with matters that cut deep to the core of Hawaiian cultural values,” Wayne Rapozo told SFGATE in an email. “But an image-building exercise does not excuse or justify acts which are, in my view, harmful.”
Local supporters point to the totality of donations from Zuckerberg and Chan, some $22 million to charitable organizations on Kauai since 2018. That includes $1 million for COVID relief in 2020, as well as three mobile health units for testing and vaccination. They also helped re-launch the County of Kauai’s Rise to Work program by contributing $4.2 million, which gave 400 participants who lost their jobs during the pandemic temporary employment, weekly pay and health insurance benefits for three months.
Last year, they awarded $4.85 million to Kauai Habitat for Humanity and $4 million to the Trust for Public Land to save the Alakoko Fishpond. And in January, they committed $50 million to the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology academic institution. It’s the university’s largest cash gift in its history and Zuckerberg and Chan’s biggest commitment to Hawaii thus far.
“These contributions have literally kept our program doors open,” wrote Tina Albao, the director for the Kauai Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii, in an op-ed last year titled “Chan, Zuckerberg deserve credit for donations.” The Kauai Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii has been awarded $690,000 from the pair since 2017.
Kauai Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii at Kalapaki Beach take a moment to take a dip in the water after a game of beach volleyball.
Kauai Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii“Nonprofits, especially on rural Kauai, have a hard time attracting new contributors. When the grant opportunity was presented, the club was very excited,” Albao told SFGATE. “The first funding helped to stabilize our teen leadership and Youth of the Year programs.
Then the pandemic happened and because we had funding in place, it changed our ability to be able to support the community. The Kauai Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii was able to adapt to the situation, expand our spaces, buy the supplies we needed and retain staff.”
Albao says CZKCF funding created an out-of-school program where youth can show up at one of their clubs to attend remote classes and after-school enrichment programs. There are also improvements to the 20-year-old clubhouse in Kapaa, where students have been using portable restrooms.
“What the funding has provided is positioning in matching funds, opportunities for growth and stability within our programs,” said Albao.
The 600-year-old Alakoko fishpond on the island of Kauai is a Native Hawaiian engineering feat. It’s also the island’s largest fishpond.
Tina AiuAnother $4 million donation from CZKCF helped save the 600-year-old Alakoko Fishpond (also known as the Menehune Fishpond) when it was listed for sale for $3 million in Jan. 2021. The Trust for Public Land and Malama Huleia, beneficiaries of the CZKCF donation, purchased the property — the largest fishpond on Kauai — preserving a landmark example of Native Hawaiian engineering and aquaculture that provides food sustainability to a community.
“I could easily imagine someone thinking, ‘Oh, why don’t we just go start this recreational property?’ And who knows what they would’ve done with it, really,” Sara Bowen, executive director of Malama Huleia, told SFGATE. “Your imagination can go wild there, and we were definitely nervous that that could happen.”
Malama Huleia had been doing environmental restoration of the fishpond through a long-term lease agreement with the former property owners when it was put up for sale. The hope was to secure the funds in order to preserve the property in perpetuity, which they were able to do with the money from CZKCF. It covered the purchase, all of the expenses associated with the transaction, plus additional funds to support the organization’s mission.
But Dr. Jonathan Osorio, dean of the Hawaiinuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, says that regardless of the financial impact of the donations from Zuckerberg and Chan, their looming presence on the island cannot be ignored.
“[Zuckerberg’s] philanthropy to the University of Hawaii is amazing and important and the contributions he’s making especially to ocean research is incredibly important,” Osorio told SFGATE. “I think the system of land speculation in Hawaii, which has grown since the ‘50s and ‘60s and has grown unabated, is really the problem here. We encourage the creation of or the invitation to wealthy folks to invest in Hawaii, and for every Zuckerberg, how many hundreds or thousands of people are just simply despoilers?
“We should not have to depend on the largest of incredibly wealthy people to do what the government and what the society at large should be doing and embracing, which is correcting the kinds of habits that we have formed in a capitalist system of just growth, consumption and waste,” he continued. “Zuckerberg doesn’t make up for the state government’s inactivity.”
