It’s UH Giving Day!

VIDEO NEWS RELEASE

UH Giving Day 2026

UH Giving Day 2026

UH Giving Day 2026

UH Giving Day 2026

Link to video and sound (details below): https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/yQnkf4giUn

UH Foundation is calling on the UH ʻohana—including alumni, friends and community members—to participate in UH Giving Day on April 8, a 24-hour effort to support students and research across the 10-campus system.

Gifts of any size will directly remove financial barriers for students, expand hands-on learning and advance research addressing Hawaiʻi’s most pressing needs, from healthcare and education to environmental stewardship.

“Philanthropy offers critical support for our students, faculty and staff, and assists UH in serving communities across our state,” said UH President Wendy Hensel. “Giving Day highlights the vital role our supporters play in expanding opportunity and sustaining the university’s mission.”

To further increase that impact, Hensel has personally created a special system-wide challenge: when 1,500 donors make a contribution to any project across the 10 campuses, her $15,000 challenge gift will be unlocked to directly benefit the University of Hawai‘i Scholarship Endowment fund. Donors can also take advantage of other matching gifts applied to a wide range of specific campus initiatives.

>> To learn more or to make a gift, visit Giving Day.

Critical timing

This year, UH Giving Day arrives at a critical time. As flooding affects communities across Hawaiʻi, urgent student relief is a top priority. Your involvement now helps ensure support reaches students quickly, when it can make the greatest difference.

Throughout the event, UH Foundation will share real-time progress, campus updates and student stories across its social media platforms with the hashtag #4UHGiving Day.

“Giving Day is about coming together as a UH ‘ohana to invest in the people and programs that matter most,” said Tim Dolan, UH Foundation CEO and VP of Advancement for UH. “When our community unites around a shared purpose, the collective impact of every gift—no matter the size—is amplified.”

VIDEO:

BROLL: (1 minute, 28 seconds)

0:00- 1:29 - Signwaving at UH Mānoa

SOUND:

Wendy Hensel, UH President (0:14)

“From the nurse who helps you, helps a neighbor to the engineering student who builds the bridge or responds to the floods, we are everywhere in Hawaiʻi, and this kind of support makes that research possible, that kind of access possible.”

Emma Pinnow, JABSOM student, scholarship recipient (0:13)

“I'd really like to focus on native Hawaiian health disparities. Being native Hawaiian, that's kind of the reason why I wanted to go into medicine and so being able to address those disparities with the education that we learn at JABSOM is really important to me.”

Rachel Radona, UH Mānoa senior, scholarship recipient (0:15)

“In Hawaiʻi we're all about community, lāhui, and about ʻohana at the end of the day, and we're trying to embody what Hawaiʻi means to us and it does feel like an ʻohana. It feels like when people are giving to us, that's our family.”