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BN: So actually, we only have another few minutes, so we may have to revisit, continue later. But maybe... maybe if you could quickly tell us what you did after JACL.

AK: Okay. So I'm still volunteering, so my combination is always volunteer and work. So I helped to start the National Youth Project Using Minibikes. So we go back to American Honda and figure that we can get some minibikes. Well, the guy laughs at me, the same guy that was going to hire me. So we start this Youth Project for junior high kids across the nation, still exists today, and it's for "delinquent kids," or those labeled delinquents, but it has to have a mix of "good kids" so it doesn't get negatively labeled. So anyway, I started to work for the national board of YMCAs with Honda and with the federal government grants. So we did that for five years. Didn't want to be a career-wide person, so I helped to run the organization with Fred Hoshiyama. I was an assistant director. Then I worked myself out of that job, so I worked for The Grantsmanship Center writing -- not writing grants, but teaching how to write grants. So it was also during that time, because I had done the NYPUM activities, I knew how to raise funds, so that's what I was teaching. But I knew how to raise federal money, government money, as well as private money. So that was that combination.

So I did that, and then I decided that -- this is getting to be in the '80s -- that I needed to think about working again in a nonprofit. So I went and took over the Southern California Center for Non-Profit Management, and that center is what they call a management support organization that helps nonprofits improve their ability to deliver services. So I did that for five years, and during that time, since they couldn't pay me what I needed, they gave me that time to be able to earn money. So we did all this good stuff. My board members were all the people from downtown, they were the corporations and philanthropists and all this kind of stuff. So we had that going, and after five years, I was able to work a couple of contracts, and one was with the state of California for a program called Partnership for Change, trying to make the public libraries more attentive and active with those populations that surround them. So the local library, working with Latinos, African American, American Indian, Asian American, those were the target populations. So for five years, we serviced that. But I did that under Kumamoto Associates, so I joined with my wife, and she became the... what happened was our attorney was a woman, I have to mention that, so she said on the papers, 50-50, partnership's 50-50. I said, "No." I said, "I think somebody needs to make the decisions when it comes time. We can always negotiate, but somebody has to be able to have the choice." So Joanne took 70 percent, or 60 percent, something like that. So she became the head of our partnership. Her boss, this other guy, was laughing because he said, "If you guys get a divorce, she gets half of your thirty and you get half of her seventy, and that becomes 50-50." So we laugh about that. So we've been doing that since 1989, so we just have for-profit, nonprofit, and whoever pays us. We enjoy that.

BN: I have some other things I want to ask you, but we may have to continue another time. And then I'll take a look at Karen's interview, too, because I think she may address some of those things, too. But for now at least, thank you very much, Alan, for taking the time.

AK: Sorry about the coughing.

BN: No, no, this was fascinating. Thank you.

AK: Okay, great.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.