In collaboration with McAllister & Quinn and Hua Nani Partners, Skog Rasmussen LLC is humbled to have been able to contribute to $1.2 billion in EPA Solar for All grant projects touching almost every state—including Hawaiʻi!—and two territories. Overall, 60 selected applicants will create new or expand existing low-income solar programs to enable more than 900,000 households in low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from distributed solar energy. Read more about the commitments here.

Hua Nani Partners recently won the 2024 Innovative Partnership Award—one of the Climate Leadership Awards rewarding exemplary leadership in response to climate change—for their work on the State Funding Readiness Project (SFRP). Skog Rasmussen LLC is honored to be a part of this team.

Skog Rasmussen LLC is glad to be a part of the team for a new Hawaiʻi Community Foundation Regional Water Infrastructure Environmental Finance Center (EFC). The EFC launched in January 2024 with Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funding under the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help communities across the state access federal funding for infrastructure projects that improve public health and environmental protection.

Skog Rasmussen LLC, including Melissa Unemori Hampe, Kim Thayer, and Keapo Bissen, assisted Maui Economic Opportunity in its roundtable discussions on November 15, 2023, at the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement Convention on “Recalibrating Maui’s Economy: What Lies Ahead?”

Congratulations to SR Partners clients who were awarded a total of $58 million through the Urban and Community Forestry Grant program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service. Skog Rasmussen assisted with three successful applications including those from Kupu in Hawaii ($20 million); Hennepin County in Minnesota ($10 million), and the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, operating across the United States and Canada ($5.6 million for organization, $22.4 million for subawards). Read more.

The reality is that Hawaii does not have a full-fledged “grant culture,” and could be doing more on several levels, according to Melissa Unemori Hampe of the economic development consultancy Skog Rasmussen. “People need to understand the basics, the terminology, and they need help,” Hampe said. Read article.

Congratulations to our national nonprofit client, the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN), and local government participants in the USDN Proposal Assistance Program and American Cities Climate Challenge (ACCC) who received over $109 million in funding for sustainability projects in the first quarter of 2023.

Skog Rasmussen helped to design and continues to implement the Federal Funding Technical Assistance program for the Urban Sustainability Directors Network which has members in 270+ local governments in Hawaiʻi, across the U.S., and in Canada. Under this program USDN delivered hundreds of hours of coaching, technical assistance, and training and helped communities secure over $100 million in state and federal funding with proposal assistance. View the USDN Annual Report.

Our Client HANO secures $4.1M in Federal Funding for Nonprofits

Pacific Business News article, Oct 25, 2022, click here to read online article. For PDF, click here.

But we must ensure that the funds are spent well, with the greatest impact for the public good. Click here to view.
Article dated September 15, 2021, by By Lisa Maruyama, Melissa Unemori Hampe,

Melissa Unemori Hampe, as a former Congressional aide, brought the federal and nonprofit perspective to the discussion as a panelist on the Civil Beat IDEAS Live show, “Tracking the Money: What is happening with Hawaii’s stimulus funds?” on May 12, 2021, along with former state Senator Jill Tokuda, chief state economist Eugene Tian, and Beth Giesting from the Hawaii Budget and Policy Center. Click here to view video.

Melissa Unemori Hampe of Skog Rasmussen and former State Senator Jill Tokuda, Special Advisor to the Hawai‘i Data Collaborative, discuss how the $1.25 billion that the federal government awarded Hawai‘i from the CARES Act is being disbursed into the community, lessons learned from this effort, and how the current pandemic-induced economic crisis is affecting our island residents.

Department of Business Economic Development & Tourism Office of Planning, State of Hawaii, October 2020 Edition. Read report.