By Nathan Jones, Founder of Village Micro Fund

At the Village Micro Fund, it is our core philosophy to build economies from the humblest of resources. VMF is an incubator and financier with the mission to reshape and develop the social and economic landscape of low-income communities around Atlanta by providing start up capital, business consulting, and a “village” of support to entrepreneurs.

We are primarily a team of students and recent graduates from Morehouse College and Georgia Tech.

The idea for the Village Micro Fund was incepted after a long summer internship in New York. It was after a conversation about work hours and passion that I knew I wanted to take a more hands on approach to finance. From that point on, a few friends and I started to build the framework for the Village.

As a function of our backgrounds, course work, or awareness everyone on the team understood the problems facing our community. The West End of Atlanta, like most low-income neighborhoods has high unemployment, crime and an unskilled labor force. We all knew that we could combat all these things by allowing entrepreneurs in the neighborhood with the will, a means to create jobs and build businesses. However, we did not have any funding. What we did have though, were a lot of talented smart guys who were excited to apply what they had learned in the classroom to real life projects and were passionate about making an impact in their neighborhood.

Our first client, The Cupcake Tailor, was a religion student who is an amazing pastry chef and was selling cupcakes but needed help on business side. He came to us and said, “I don’t know if I’m making money or losing money, I just know people like eating my cupcakes.” We helped him craft his business plan, figured out his unit cost per cupcake and priced them at market. We also set up an ordering and accounting system that was easy to use and allowed him to better track his sales. As his brand started to grow so did ours.

Outside of taking on our first clients, one of the defining moments of our first  months in business was an economic development studio we were invited to by my professor Dr. Sheri Davis-Faulkner. She teaches a class called “Poverty and Social Justice” at a neighboring institution, Spelman College, and was super involved in our local neighborhood’s community alliance. She introduced us to the presidents of the surrounding neighborhood’s merchants associations and local developers who are continually a huge support of our efforts.

As we have become more involved in our community, we have come to learn that the small things like bringing your friends to eat locally can be extremely impactful for a neighborhoods development. The biggest advice I would give to anyone looking to start a campus MFI is talk to everyone about the idea, students, professors, alum, everyone! Poverty is a problem that most people care about and we have found that people genuinely want to be a part of a solution.

The Village Micro Fund has been running since February 2014 and has consulted six businesses. In August we will be apart of a grant with the University Community Development Corporation to consult fifteen businesses between the West End and Martin Luther King Merchants associations. From there we are looking to give out our first round of loans!