In Hawai‘i’s largest successful crowdfunding campaign to date, National Tropical Botanical Garden raised $280,000 last spring to upgrade the climate-control system at its botanical research center on Kaua‘i.

The project was funded through Blue Planet Foundation’s WEfficiency online lending platform, which helps nonprofits spend less on electricity and more on programs that further their core missions. The organizations repay the loans with funds saved from the energy efficiency upgrades and supporters can multiply their impact by backing additional projects with the same funds. Contributions pledged to the National Tropical Botanical Garden campaign include $110,000 in matched funds from the Wefficiency Hui, a group of philanthropic supporters such as the Kokua Hawai‘i Foundation, the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation and former eBay executive Randy Ching. The energy upgrades will prevent 131 tons of carbon emissions per year and cut the research center’s energy expenses in half, redirecting $60,000 in annual electricity costs to NTBG education and research programs.

Built in 2008 at National Tropical Botanical Garden headquarters in Kalaheo, the Juliet Rice Wichman Botanical Research Center is Kaua‘i’s first certified green building, earning LEED Gold status in January 2009.

High-performance building features include a rooftop photovoltaic array, rainwatercatchment system and natural daylighting.

Dean Sakamoto Architects designed the facility within the context of the existing NTBG campus envisioned by Vladimir

Ossipoff, an influential figure in Hawaiian modern architecture and an early proponent of sustainable building design. “Growing up in the islands at a time of immense development and changes in the built environment, I became aware of Ossipoff’s quest to match architecture to its specific place,” says Principal Architect Dean Sakamoto, FAIA, LEED AP. “His work resonated with my own aesthetic response to design problems—an approach informed by a process of simplification and the Japanese notion of shibui—given over to a higher order.”

The layout of the building allows for full integration of the research center’s state-oftheart facilities and its proximity to NTBG’s adjacent Allerton and McBryde gardens makes for an unparalleled combination of cultural, scientific and environmental resources.

The facility brings together two major research collections: the Loy McCandless Marks Botanical Library and the National Tropical Botanical Garden herbarium.

With the addition of the NTBG seed bank, the research center also unites National Tropical Botanical Garden’s scientific and conservation operations under one roof.

The botanical reference library houses more than 20,000 books, journals, botanical prints and archival materials dating back to the 16th century and the herbarium’s 74,000 preserved plant specimens constitute the most extensive recent collection of Hawaiian and Marquesan preserved plant specimens in existence. Thanks to Wefficiency’s online lending program, National Tropical Botanical Garden can maintain critical temperature and humidity levels with a smaller carbon footprint, preserving these priceless collections while devoting more resources to scientific research and conservation. —Lauren McNally