Clara Miller  
President & CEO, Nonprofit Finance Fund

Clara Miller is President and CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), a national leader in social enterprise finance. NFF, which Miller created and has run for over 20 years, serves as an “investment banker” to nonprofit organizations. It is a federally certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). Directly and with others, NFF has leveraged more than $750 million of capital investment into nonprofits, over $130 million of which have been direct loans. Other forms of direct investment include loan guarantees, multi-year contracts to build balance sheet strength, and capital and planning grants. NFF also provides workshops and advisory services on capitalization practices.

Miller is currently a board member of Working Today (the Free-Lancers Union) and Community Wealth Ventures, a subsidiary of Share Our Strength. She recently was elected Treasurer of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation Board. She is also a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Community Development Advisory Council, the Arts & Business UK/The Jerwood Charity “Mission, Money & Models” Symposium Advisory Committee and the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Advisory Board. She has written and spoken extensively on nonprofit capitalization, and is the author of a number of articles on the subject including “The Looking-Glass World of Nonprofit Money: Managing in For-Profits’ Shadow Universe, (Nonprofit Quarterly, Spring, 2005);” “Risk Minus Cash Equals Crisis: The Flap abut General Operating Support (State of Philanthropy, Fall 2004),” “Hidden in Plain Sight: Understanding Nonprofit Capital Structure (Nonprofit Quarterly, Spring, 2003),” and, with Tony Proscio, “Steppenwolf’s New Stage (Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall, 2003).”

Miller was a Presidential appointee to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Community Development Advisory Board in 1996, established to advise the then newly-created Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. She served until 2002, and was its chair from 1999 to 2002. Ms. Miller was a board member of the National Community Capital Association from 1992 to 2001, and was its chair for six years from 1995-2001.

Before her tenure at NFF, Ms. Miller worked at The New York Community Trust, The National Academy of Sciences, and as an economic development planner in Corning, NY. Ms. Miller has a Masters Degree from Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning, and she completed the Institute for Nonprofit Management at Columbia University.

Articles by Clara Miller: (1)