HONOLULU, Hawaii – The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement recently entered into a partnership agreement with Alaska Growth Capital to bring new market tax credits and loan funds to Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian communities.
“We are very excited to be working with Native Hawaiians, and to share our capital strategies to support community projects in our respective homelands,” said Hugh Short, AGC president. “We’ve operated as a community development enterprise for over 11 years, bringing capital to a myriad of economic development projects in urban and rural areas.”
The partnership agreement includes packaging of community facility, cultural center and charter school facility projects for potential funding and placement of tax credits. It also includes mentoring of Native Hawaiians in tax credit financing as well as promoting loan fund management.
“Alaska Growth Capital is the brainchild of the Inupiat Eskimos, formed to tap into diversified capital markets to support development projects in their home state,” said Robin Puanani Danner, CNHA president and CEO. “We are very happy to be working with them to bring tax credit financing that is quite prevalent across the country to our communities. This partnership definitely will build our own capacity here at home.”
AGC is owned by an Alaska Native organization and is certified by the U.S. Treasury Department. The partnership agreement also includes assistance to CNHA in achieving certification in 2009.
“It’s a great partnership,” Short said. “Natives helping Natives has always been a core value of our work.”
