Cultivating a corporate culture of giving back
by Shannon Tangonan | Oct. 2, 2025
When I agreed to be among the 104 Hawaiian Electric volunteers at this year’s Okinawan Festival on Oahu in late August, it slipped my mind that it was during Labor Day weekend, and I had already signed up for a shift at our company’s annual golf tournament on Labor Day to benefit Aloha United Way.
But for so many of us at Hawaiian Electric, volunteering two days out of a three-day weekend didn’t feel like a sacrifice. It’s our kuleana, or responsibility, to give back to our communities — and we do it with an incredible sense of pride.
At the Okinawan Festival, my work bestie, Teri Theuriet (manager of internal communications), and I worked the scrip booth, collecting cash and processing credit cards for scrips to buy everything from andagi (Okinawan donuts) to T-shirts. The funds raised at the festival, held at the Hawaii Convention Center, support student exchange and other cultural programs.
When Teri and I finished our Saturday afternoon shift at the festival we told each other: “See you Monday!”
We both signed up for the 7:30 a.m. Labor Day shift at the company’s Aloha United Way Golf Tournament at Hawaii Prince Golf Club in Ewa Beach. During our shift we helped sell golf games and raffle tickets to raise money for AUW, which partners with more than 300 nonprofits that support the most vulnerable in our local communities.
So we were on a mission to sell those games. For $20, a golfer could get a Kapolei High School golf team member to tee off for them. For a low, low $40, golfers could summon the Birdie Blaster (a hand-crafted PVC “bazooka”) to shoot their golf ball down the fairway from the tee box. And don’t forget the raffle tickets — $20 for 30 tickets — for all kinds of prizes. Our hours-long sales gig was just one small facet of a much larger fundraising operation.
“Planning something as big as the AUW Golf Tournament can be challenging when you know you already have a full plate. But when you bring Hawaiian Electric employees together and form a committee to tackle the task as a group, something magical happens,” said Christian Whitney, director of pole infrastructure enterprise and co-chair of the golf fundraiser committee.
“You find yourself working with people who are passionate about giving back, and who rally around a cause for good,” Christian said. “And at the end of the day you see the direct impact your time and effort yields, which for the AUW Golf Tournament is well over $100,000 for such a worthy cause.”
More than 75 Hawaiian Electric employees covered shifts on Labor Day well into the evening. Call me sappy, but volunteerism at Hawaiian Electric is a labor of love that is demonstrated time and time again, year after year.
In 2024, employees across the company’s five-island service area — along with their families and friends — volunteered about 6,895 hours over 127 community events.
It’s simply one way to demonstrate that Hawaiian Electric is here for our communities and customers.
Shannon Tangonan is a senior communications specialist at Hawaiian Electric.
