The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, one of the largest private U.S. foundations and one of the biggest donors to charitable organizations in Hawai'i, has announced a leadership transition plan that will result in a new chairman of the board and a new president being installed next year.

The Baltimore-based foundation said Donn Weinberg, son of Harry and Jeanette Weinberg, will become chairman of the trustee board, while Rachel Garbow Monroe will assume the president's role after Shale Stiller steps down next year.

Alvin Awaya, who helped Weinberg run his Hawai'i holdings, remains as one of the foundation's executive officers as well as being one of its five trustees.

Though in Maryland, the foundation has ties with Hawai'i, given Harry Weinberg's business and real estate holdings here.

Weinberg, who had no formal education past the sixth grade, managed to parlay his entrepreneurial and business talent into a fortune during his years working in Maryland and Hawai'i. In doing so, Weinberg became one of the largest individual investors in Hawai'i real estate at the time of his death in 1990.

The Weinberg Foundation gives away about $100 million each year to charitable organizations primarily in Maryland, Hawai'i, Pennsylvania, New York, Israel and the former Soviet Union.

The foundation said the leadership change will come as Stiller concludes his originally agreed upon five-year term as president. It credited Stiller with making changes in the foundation's professional structure, grant review process and opening the organization up as a much more visible community member.

It said the changes were voted on unanimously by the foundation's five trustees and won't affect the way the foundation makes grants. Plans call for retaining all foundation staff.

During the foundation's fiscal year ended February 2008, the foundation made at least 15 grants to Hawai'i-based groups totaling $11.9 million.