DURHAM -- In Jay Miller's rosy view of human nature, anyone with ample time and money would devote himself to helping others.
So Miller doesn't find it remarkable that he has given away most of his time and a good chunk of his money since he sold his retail business a decade ago.
In the past few years, Miller has refurbished a crumbling historical school into a nonprofit retreat center and contributed his business savvy to several nonprofit groups in Orange and Durham counties. For six months, he has served as the unpaid interim director of the Carrboro Arts Center, pulling that organization's troubled finances into order. He hopes to turn the center over to a new director soon.
Miller thinks of himself as a sort of nonprofit handyman, ready to step in whenever problems arise. The list of his beneficiaries is long, though most focus on mental health, substance abuse, or the arts.
Most of his work is on the financial side, using his experience as a businessman to straighten out money issues. But he says he's been on the roof of the ArtsCenter, and he was quick to put a mop to his retreat center's sticky porch on a recent evening.
"I think of myself as a problem solver," he says. "That's my nature."
If he is modest about his accomplishments, others see them on a grander scale. He was honored as the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Citizen of the Year for 2011, and he has received numerous awards from the nonprofits he serves.
Miller combines a generous spirit with down-to-earth know-how, says friend and fellow volunteer Peter Kramer.
"His participation is broad, but it's also deep in everything he does," Kramer says.
Music and madness
Miller, 53, has a boyish look, with wispy bangs he moves from side to side as he talks and a grin that seems to suggest mischief. He grew up in Birmingham, Ala., where his father worked in the savings-and-loan industry.
He moved to the Triangle in the 1970s to attend Duke University, which his father and sister also attended. His plan was to go to law school, but upon graduation he chose a different path.
A longtime musician, he decided the area's music circles could support a store selling instruments and other equipment. So he opened the Music Loft store in Durham and eventually expanded into five other North Carolina cities, including a large store on Capital Boulevard in Raleigh.
He did well in the music business, riding a wave of interest in playing guitar among baby boomers and their children. Miller often worked 60 hours a week running the stores and then at night would play shows at venues such as Cameron Village's basement clubs.
This fast-paced lifestyle came at a price. He blames his workaholic ways for ending his first marriage and for fueling a drug habit that came to a head when he was in his mid-20s.
He says he first experimented with drugs in middle school, but around the time his first child was born, he realized he was caught in a cycle of dependency.
"You're trying to re-create a feeling that's not going to happen again," he says. "That's the insanity of it."
In quitting, he helped to create Durham's first Narcotics Anonymous program. He feels lucky that he was able to kick the habit, and he says this experience helps him empathize with others in vulnerable positions.
Profits, then nonprofits
His Music Loft days ended abruptly in 2002. A national chain offered to buy his Raleigh store, and he sold it, sensing that midsize music dealers likely wouldn't survive amid this new competition. He sold his other stores to longtime employees, and he has seen most of them close since the economic downturn.
He still owns the buildings that housed those stores, along with other commercial properties that earn him a sizable income. He splits his time between managing these properties and his nonprofit work.
In 2004, he and his second wife founded the Shared Visions Foundation so that he could offer targeted grants to nonprofits in need. There's no formal application process; Miller seeks out grantees personally.
He was on his way to visit one nonprofit when he first saw the Murphey School, a 1923 structure with a Depression-era auditorium that sits on a patch of rural Orange County land near Durham. He had been mulling the idea of a nonprofit retreat center that would allow groups to rent space for short-term meetings or as longer-term tenants, and the location fit well his mission to serve both Durham and Orange counties.
The renovation was intense and expensive, including a new septic system and ridding the old auditorium of termites. In all, Miller says he has spent about a million dollars. His hope is for the center to serve as a sort of nonprofit incubator, where new groups can get started at minimal cost, then move on. One current tenant, the Just Right Academy, is quickly outgrowing its 2,500-square-foot space.
Mental Health America of the Triangle, with whom Miller has a long history, occupies a building where Murphey School teachers once lived.
Helping with finances
Miller has an office at the school building, but he says he spends most of his time in the car; piles of paper line the seats of his Toyota Prius, including a heavily scribbled-in datebook.
He says he finds no shortage of groups needing financial help.
"Most people get into nonprofits because they're passionate about the work they do," he says. "But maybe they are not so passionate about revenue and expense statements."
At the ArtsCenter, he says his greatest accomplishment was negotiating down the group's debts and helping secure a grant to pay them. Other cuts were made, though the staff remained intact.
"We've made the turn, and we're moving in the right direction," he says of the Arts Center.
His commitments are always in flux. One problem, he says, is taking on too much.
"You can get to the point where you spread yourself so thin that you're not really helping anyone very much," he says.
