 |
Advisor Highlight: Melvin Y. Agena
Turning an Idea Into a Reality
In 2015, when Melvin Y. Agena, a 2023 Outstanding Professional Advisor awardee, came face-to-face with the reality and hardships of homeless families on O‘ahu’s westside of the island, he was compelled to take action instead of turning a blind eye.
SAVVY SOLUTION FOR HOMELESSNESS
“One day, eight years ago, Graham LippSmith, a class-action attorney teammate, and I saw many houseless families with young children living on the beach across from Makua Cave,” says Agena. “I was shocked by what I saw.”
The image of one of the children, a toddler wandering aimlessly in diapers, sticks with Agena to this day, he says, and compelled him to seek a solution.
At the time, he was working with a team of attorneys to litigate several class-action structural home defect cases. After the first case was settled, there were residual class action settlement funds left over. With the support and encouragement of LippSmith and the rest of the team, Agena reached out to the Hawai‘i Community Foundation (HCF) to explore options for using these funds to address homelessness in West O‘ahu.
The “left over” funds, legally known as cy pres awards—meaning “as near as possible”—are settlement funds that are unclaimed by individual class members or are funds that are impractical to distribute due to the small amounts involved and the large number of class members. To address this issue, the courts grant cy pres awards to beneficiaries, often nonprofit charitable organizations like HCF, that address related issues as near as possible to those underlying the class action lawsuit.
OUTSIDE OF THE BOX THINKING
“It’s an ingenious, outside-of-the-box idea to use cy pres funds to address homelessness,” says Kawena Beaupre, HCF’s general counsel, whose team provides the Court with HCF’s plan for the funds, and an annual financial and progress update. “We need innovative solutions like Mel’s to tackle Hawai‘i’s systemic problems, and I encourage our professional advisor community to collaborate with HCF to help accomplish their philanthropic goals, and those of their clients.”
Agena’s idea has transformed the lives of more than 240 households in West O‘ahu thanks to nearly $2.3 million in cy pres awards distributed to the West O‘ahu Homeless Funds, which are field of interest funds at HCF supporting nonprofits that provide shelter, outreach, and permanent housing services for unhoused families on the west side of O‘ahu, including military veterans. The cy pres funding continues today, with more money in the pipeline to combat homelessness in West O‘ahu.
Agena says the experience changed his perception of charitable institutions’ capacity, which he encourages others to tap into like he did. “I think most people, like myself, wait for charitable institutions to say, ‘would you like to donate?’ If you're interested in doing something, even if you think it’s a crazy idea, talk to different charitable foundations. See what they can do to help turn your idea into reality.”
|