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Devin: What is your superpower?
Chris: What I’ve decided my superpower is now is naivete. We have this ridiculously big idea in front of us and a tool to make it happen, and I believe that we’re going to do this.
Locally controlled community investment funds can help communities keep wealth circulating at home rather than watching outside capital extract it.
That is the big idea Chris Miller, founding board member and chair of the National Coalition for Community Capital, brought to this episode. Chris and I have been talking about community capital for years. What makes this moment exciting is that NC3 is moving from education and advocacy into replicable, on-the-ground fund creation.
Chris described NC3 as “a decade-old overnight success.” The organization grew out of the early investment crowdfunding movement, including the passage of state-level crowdfunding exemptions like the Michigan law Chris helped champion in 2013.
For years, NC3 trained communities and entrepreneurs on the promise of community capital. Then Chris had a humbling experience. After working with more than 100 Michigan communities that had used donation crowdfunding for public spaces, he expected to help many of them shift into investment crowdfunding for local businesses and real estate. Instead, only a couple of projects moved forward.
That failure became insight. “It’s not rocket science, but there’s no ecosystem,” Chris said. “There’s a very small ecosystem supporting this really radical change in how capital can flow in our communities.”
That realization led NC3 to create its Community Capital Accelerator and what it now calls the Diversified Community Investment Fund. The structure uses real estate as a foundation. Once 60 percent of a fund is invested in real estate, the fund can invest in other local priorities, often businesses.
NC3 has helped build funds in Rhode Island, Detroit and Petoskey, Michigan. It is working actively in four more communities, with a pipeline of 12 to 18 additional prospects. With support from Kresge, NC3 is also partnering with the International Economic Development Council to work with 21 communities.
Chris’s vision is rooted in local control. He warned that too many communities now depend on outside businesses whose model is to put in as little as possible and take out as much as possible.
“We have to get back to the place where we again decide what happens in our communities and have the opportunity to make investments into those projects and businesses and housing so that we can reap the benefit of it,” Chris said.
The goal is not just more capital. It is more democratic capital, more local ownership and more resilient communities.
“We have to take a dollar into our community,” Chris said. “We have to pass it around five or six or 10 or 12 times in order to really build wealth.”
tl;dr:
Chris Miller and NC3 are building community investment funds that let local residents invest locally.
Diversified Community Investment Funds use real estate structures to unlock broader community business investment.
Chris sees extractive outside capital draining wealth from towns and wants dollars recirculating locally.
NC3 has launched or developed funds in Rhode Island, Detroit and Petoskey with more coming.
Naivete helps Chris pursue huge goals, move legislation quickly and keep pushing despite obstacles.
How to Develop Naivete As a Superpower
Chris named his superpower with a smile: “What I’ve decided my superpower is now is naivete.” He explained that NC3 is pursuing “this ridiculously big idea” of putting community investment funds everywhere, adding, “I believe that we’re going to do this.” To Chris, naivete is not ignorance. It is the willingness to imagine a better system before the current one gives permission. “As long as people don’t keep saying this is a bad idea to us, we’re going to be naive enough to imagine this happening across the country,” he said.
Chris’s favorite example came from Michigan in 2013. With no prior experience passing securities legislation, he helped introduce a state investment crowdfunding law in August. By December, he was in the governor’s office watching it be signed. The bill passed with just one no vote across both chambers. That early success showed him that big systems could move quickly when passion, relationships and the right idea aligned. Soon after, he helped a neighboring community use the law for a microbrewery raise that filled so fast he missed the chance to invest himself.
Hold a dream big enough to pull you through hard work and uncertainty.
Start from genuine care for people, communities and shared opportunity.
Stand up, say something and do something before you have every answer.
Treat difficulty as expected, not disqualifying: say, “So what? Let’s do it anyway.”
Build relationships with people who share the vision and can bring skills you lack.
Use early wins to prove to yourself and others that broken systems can change.
Stay naive enough to believe change is possible and prepared enough to execute well.
By following Chris’s example and advice, you can make naivete a skill. With practice and effort, you could make it a superpower that enables you to do more good in the world.
Remember, however, that research into success suggests that building on your own superpowers is more important than creating new ones or overcoming weaknesses. You do you!
Guest Profile
Chris Miller (he/him):
Founding Board Member and Chair, National Coalition for Community Capital
About National Coalition for Community Capital: NC3 works to advance the Community Capital movement. This engagement of regular (retail) investors into businesses and projects in their own communities empowers citizens while it builds financial resilience and wealth for individuals and communities.
Website: NC3now.org
Biographical Information: Chris Miller is chair and one of the founding board members of the National Coalition for Community Capital, a 501c3. Among NC3’s goals are to empower ordinary citizens and strengthen local economies though community investment and ownership, with particular attention to wealth-building by non-accredited investors and to underserved populations and communities. Chris has been working on community, economic, and entrepreneur development in Michigan for nearly 20 years in a variety of roles, including as an appointed and elected city official, as a board member and frequent chair of a variety of community and economic development organizations, as a partner with student teams from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, as an Innovation Fellow at the Michigan State University EDA Center for Regional and Economic Innovation, and as the City of Adrian’s economic developer. During that time, in addition to securing millions of grant dollars and matching private investments, he also developed a local investor group, led a community business plan competition, and worked with local schools to implement entrepreneurship education. While working his day job in Adrian, he also introduced and championed Michigan’s MILE – an investment crowdfunding exemption that served as a national model, and he currently has introduced legislation that would create a first in the nation investment incentive available to any state resident regardless of wealth. During 2023, Chris worked extensively on a new program the International Economic Development Council developed called the Economic Recovery Corps. Funded with Cares Act dollars from the Economic Development Administration, 65 ERC Fellows were awarded to 65 hosts from across the county. The Fellows will work full time with their hosts for 2.5 years addressing underserved communities in a variety of economic and community development projects. NC3 was awarded a Fellow to work in Michigan in the start-up and incubator space, adding community investors to capital required by new or expanding businesses. Over the past decade Chris has spoken across the country on the promise and future of community capital, while also working on the ground on donation and investment crowdfunding campaigns with communities and entrepreneurs. Chris is the developer and lead for NC3’s Community Capital Accelerator which is now piloting NC3’s Diversified Community Investment Fund in large projects in Detroit, Michigan and Cincinnati, Ohio, and expects to see the launch of funds in Rhode Island and Petoskey, Michigan in 2024. In addition, the organization is working on projects in nearly a dozen states. Today, Chris and his wife Joyce own and live in a 170-year-old downtown Adrian building where they renovated the commercial floor for The Buzz Café and Marketplace. Joyce and her business partners opened The Buzz during COVID, after an investment crowdfunding campaign which received investment from 45 investors in 7 different states. When not working on their building renovation, Chris led the team that brought PlaneWave Instruments from California to Michigan, and now serves as their Special Projects Consultant. In that role Chris serves as the primary community and education outreach lead, manages campus arts partners, and works with economic development organizations as well as State and Federal governments to secure resources for PlaneWave. From their headquarters in Michigan, PlaneWave leads the world in the design and manufacture of high-tech observatory class research telescopes.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/nc3now
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