Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation

Community-based marine stewardship depends on continuity: sustained monitoring, long-term relationships, institutional memory, and the people who remain engaged despite changing ecological, social, and funding conditions. In conservation philanthropy, there is growing discussion of trust-based and relational funding approaches. Yet a gap often remains between the stated desire to support conservation this way and the funding structures available to community-based organizations, which are still frequently organized around short-term projects, discrete deliverables, and fixed reporting cycles. These models are poorly aligned with the longer time horizons required for adaptive marine governance.

This case study examines Mālama Pūpūkea-Waimea (MPW), a community-based organization that has co-managed the Pūpūkea Marine Life Conservation District on the North Shore of Oʻahu with the State of Hawaiʻi for more than two decades. Drawing on interviews, documents, literature reviews, and field observations, the study analyzes how MPW’s stewardship continuity has been sustained through long-term relationships, local trust, and flexible support.

The case provides a grounded example of what relational conservation funding can look like in practice. MPW’s experience shows that stewardship capacity does not emerge from isolated projects alone, but from the accumulation of knowledge, trust, relationships, and presence over time. The study argues that organizational continuity should be understood as a core component of marine governance infrastructure. For donors, funders, and community partners, the implication is not simply to give more, but to support differently: through flexible, recurring, relational, and in-kind support that allows community-based organizations to keep showing up, learning, adapting, and governing over time.