What if the fastest way out of predatory lending isn't a lecture on budgeting, but $50 saved at a time? That's the model behind Mint to Prosper Foundation, a savings marketplace built for asset-limited households to step away from payday loans and rent-to-own traps and build their first real financial cushion. Host Dr. Laura Scherck Wittcoff sits down with founder and Executive Director Nesha K. Brown, who turned the loss of both her parents and a period of homelessness into a peer-cohort savings program now operating in two states.
Guest
Nesha K. Brown, Executive Director & Founder, Mint to Prosper Foundation
Nesha is a social impact strategist focused on financial empowerment and systems design, specializing in structured savings pathways that help asset-limited households step away from predatory lending and reach long-term stability. Her work is rooted in personal experience: after losing both parents by age 19, she was pushed into homelessness and had to unlearn and relearn everything she knew about money. What began as her own financial "social experiment" grew into a program that has since served over 1,500 people.
What is Mint to Prosper Foundation?
Mint to Prosper Foundation is a nonprofit savings marketplace that helps unbanked, underbanked, and asset-limited households build their first financial safety net and move away from predatory lending. Its core offerings include:
Key Topics Covered
From personal crisis to nonprofit
After her father's death at work, Nesha discovered her survivor benefits, meant to be her safety net, had been misused due to his financial illiteracy. Determined to change the trajectory for herself, she began teaching herself financial literacy and sharing what she learned online. Within six months, at age 20, she had earned $55,000 simply talking people through budgeting and credit basics, an accidental start that organically grew into Mint to Prosper Foundation.
The pilot program
In 2024, Mint to Prosper received a grant from Louisiana State University to run a social experiment with 30 unbanked or asset-limited participants, in partnership with Chase Bank, helping them build a first $500 safety net over ten weeks. The average participant was 34 years old, had never saved more than $800, and had experienced some form of financial trauma, insights that shaped the program's focus on micro habits and behavior change rather than large, intimidating savings goals. The pilot's success, including one participant who leaned on her cushion during a Louisiana hurricane rather than meeting the full $500 goal, evolved into the current 12-week Community Savings Program.
The highlighter exercise
After her father passed, a financial coach had Nesha print her last bank statements and highlight her spending into needs and wants. Seeing her spending laid out visually was an awakening, showing her that her "wants" had surpassed her needs, and became a simple, repeatable technique she now teaches others: assess your reality, then ask what you're willing to sacrifice to change it.
Predatory lending, up close
Nesha shares her own early experience taking out a payday loan against a paycheck stub at triple the typical interest rate, and describes how loans marketed as two-week solutions trap borrowers for an average of five months. She and Dr. Laura also discuss rent-to-own furniture schemes, using Nesha's own washing machine and dryer purchase, paid at $30 a week, as an example of how affordable-looking payments can end up costing double the item's value. Nesha notes that the predatory lending industry has been extracting wealth from vulnerable communities since before World War II, an estimated $280 billion industry today.
Turning awareness into action
Rather than only warning people about the risks of predatory lending, Mint to Prosper reframes the conversation: showing participants what they could have done with the money instead, whether that's a certification, child care access, or another upward-mobility opportunity, so people see themselves as part of the solution rather than victims of the system.
An intergenerational cohort
Participants range from age 18 to their mid-60s. Nesha shares the story of a participant in her late 50s, a grandmother, who told the group she'd made "careless mistakes" raising her own kids but was determined to get it right for her grandchildren. For Nesha, it was a powerful reminder that it's never too late to reset, regardless of age, and that the work is fundamentally intergenerational.
Advice for anyone feeling stuck
Nesha's core philosophy: start small. Before you can save $500, you need to know how to save $50. She encourages people to assess where they are honestly, choose a micro starting point, and remember that, as she puts it, "Rome wasn't built in a day," but the bricks still count, no matter how small.
How to Get Involved
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Website: SmallandGutsy.org
Email: Laura@SmallandGutsy.org
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