Meet Donte Miller | Executive Director of Village Micro Fund

We had the good fortune of connecting with Donte Miller and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Donte, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Growing up the only thing I knew about money was everything you couldn’t do if you didn’t have it, As I grew, my desire to learn more about money led me to Morehouse College, where I received the opportunities to intern at the Federal Reserve Bank, Google, and Goldman Sachs; even earning 1 out of the 16 Goldman Sachs Scholarship of Excellence. It was at Goldman Sachs that I really truly began to understand money and what I learned was that the game was rigged. The more I learned about money and markets, the more I understood the true cost of being poor. By the end of the summer, I knew that I wanted to take the knowledge, the resources and the network that came from my experience on Wall Street and take it back to the people that need it the most, so I decided to leave, come back to Atlanta and start the Village Micro Fund. We wanted to create a place where people that have historically have been kept out of capital markets and information could learn, invest and play a role in developing their own communities, but first, we had to prove ourselves useful; we started with service. Our first client, Keitra Bates, owner of Marddy’s shared kitchen space, needed help figuring out food costs, accounting, and financing, so we helped and got 60 people together to raise $5000 for a loan; as Keitra paid off her loan, the community got paid back what they put in plus interest. After seeing the success of that, we decided to make this systematic and formed our cohort and cooperative investing crowdfunding platform and made it free of charge because we didn’t want to disqualify those that needed our services the most. The vision is to create a world where access to resources is as abundant as the genius and talent in our community.

What should our readers know about your business?
When we first decided we wanted to start the Village, all we had was the experience from our various internships, the network we gained from those experiences, and the information we learned along the way. To start, we threw a workshop on entrepreneurship, inviting all our tech, Wall Street, and consulting friends in order to see if we actually had something of value to contribute. We invited six speakers, only four entrepreneurs showed up, and only one stayed to the end; that was our first client, Keitra Banks, owner of Westview Pizza Café. WVPC was a community staple, but she had a few issues; she was in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, she was unclear about her food costs, and she needed a new stove. This restaurant became the place for conversations between the new and old members of the neighborhood because at any given time you could find someone in there still waiting on their pizza. We helped her figure out their food costs, financial statements, and invited all of our friends to take part in the experience. Now that she had accurate financials, accurate pricing, and new customers, we believed that we had enough community to be able to raise the capital for her new stove, so we built our crowdfunding platform and had our first loan funding party. That day over 60 people came and invested over $5,000 in Keitra’s loan. Everyone was so excited to be able to invest in one of their favorite businesses and were already asking questions about when the next time this would happen. They were excited to be participating in the self development of their own community and about the 6% return on their investment, so when the loan was paid off one year later, it proved that this was possible. Once we saw that it worked for one, we had to prove that it could be scaled, so we developed our curriculum and Village Certification to form our 15 week Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. This was really the foundation that we built the Village on; education, the gathering of community, and the cooperative investing of that community.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I honestly wouldn’t be the friend to ask this question to. lol I don’t honestly go out much, but when I do, there are always a few spots I stop by. I’d take them by Local Green Atlanta for lunch, because I don’t wake up early enough for breakfast, and would recommend the Shrimp burger or the Kale salad if they’re vegan. If we’re around local green, we aren’t too far from Truly Living Well, so a tour of the farm would be cool; it’s beautiful in the summer and a staple in Atlanta in its own right. After that, the west end park is right down the street, so maybe have a picnic over there with a below the border wrap +add sweet corn from Tassili’s raw reality. I love the Westside, don’t leave it that often. lol

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Harriett Williams of the Village Micro Fund – harriett@villagemicrofund.com Nene Igietseme of the Metro Atlanta Time Bank – n.v.igietseme@gmail.com

Website: villagemicrofund.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/villagemicrofund/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donte-miller-9a219357/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/villagemicrofund
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-CFUnN8zJX90la-jEPafCA

Image Credits
Khalifa Sultan