United Way's Difference Maker Award winner: 'If you need something ... he will be there'

Feb. 10—CHAMPAIGN — Scott Miller has been serving on various charity boards since he was 26. Now newly turned 40 and a father, he's taking a step back — but he knows people will reach out if they need him.

"Most people have my cellphone number or my email and know they can just say, 'I need a favor.' I'll be like, 'I got you, whatever you need,'" Miller said.

Amy Brown, CEO of the Don Moyer Boys and Girls Club, has the same impression after working with him as a board member.

"He's the kind of guy where you know that if you need something, you can just call or text him and he will be there," she said.

His dedication to the organizations he works with, either as a member or by donating through his Jersey Mike's franchises, will be recognized by the United Way of Champaign County at its annual meeting Friday.

Miller will receive the Difference Maker Award, which United Way Communications Director Mary Noel Stefan said recognizes individuals who "are always asking how they can help, using their circles of influence for good and rolling up their sleeves to get things done."

New life chapter

Miller has been on the Boys and Girls Club board for seven years, so his term limit is up anyway, but he's also excited to take a break and experience being a dad.

He and wife Katie are busy taking care of 4-month-old Jackson, their first child.

"It's so funny, you used to do all this exciting stuff, and then you have a kid," Miller said.

Katie jokes that since Jackson looks so much like Scott, it was like doing all the work for a group project and then your partner gets the credit.

It's true that Scott wasn't available to help as much as he might have liked around the time Jackson was born; that was a month before the Boys and Girls Club's "Dancing with the CU Stars" fundraiser and around the time he was opening a Jersey Mike's location in Rantoul.

"I said, 'I'm going to be the worst absentee father for three weeks. ... Jackson will understand,'" Miller said. Katie "was a rock star. She held everything down."

Deep involvement

Miller has been chairman for the Dancing with the CU Stars events for the last two years, during which time he has helped bring in over a million dollars for the Boys and Girls Club, and was a contestant in 2015 and 2021.

All this involvement with the Boys and Girls Club traces back to when he first moved to Champaign in 2000 and joined the club as he finished high school at Centennial.

"The Boys and Girls Club always meant a lot to me. Sam Banks, the old CEO, is like a second father to me," Miller said. "I go to our club all the time just to see those kids, spend time with those kids.

"I was lucky enough to get a lot of opportunities from my parents. Those kids don't have those same opportunities that I had, but at least the club has given them an opportunity they might not have had in the past."

'Really a family business'

Prior to living in C-U, Miller's family moved around the country, never staying in one place for longer than five years.

After graduating from Centennial, Miller went to Purdue — which he said means the one time his friends don't like him is when the Illini play the Boilermakers and he turns up in black and gold.

He then worked in Chicago for a few years but returned to Champaign to join McDonald's "second-generation program" and work at the local franchise alongside his father.

"It was really a family business," Miller said.

At 26, Miller became the youngest McDonald's franchisee in the country ... until that record was broken three weeks later.

"It was a cool thing for three weeks," he said.

He was president, his mom was CFO, his sister was the office/HR manager and his dad considered himself "the board of directors of one."

To this day, the family is close metaphorically — Miller said he calls them each at least once a week — and physically — with the exception of his father, they all live within a square mile of each other.

They ran and expanded their McDonald's franchises until 2019, when they agreed it was time for a change and sold the stores.

New ventures

For a few years, Miller worked for Green Street Realty, but he started to miss being self-employed.

"I study food industries and all the different brands, and I was just drawn to Jersey Mike's during COVID, drawn to what they did in the community," Miller said.

He now owns stores in Bloomington, Champaign, Normal, Peoria, Rantoul and Springfield, with a Danville location coming soon and more on the way.

Miller has found ways to raise funds through his business with the help of operators Johnna LaRue and Kevin Dunkelberger.

As he plans each new location, he scopes out the community for charities, often with the help of people he knows from that town's McDonald's.

Miller tends to focus on certain causes, especially kids and people with physical or mental disabilities. He'll also add any local chapter of the Boys and Girls Club to his list.

The next part is hard: choosing one.

Miller "interviews" groups and checks out how they spend donations.

"And then I make a decision, but then I feel bad because I'm always between two or three," he said.

When possible, he will organize one-off fundraisers for the other groups to offer a little support .

Latest partnership

The Danville location, set to open Feb. 21, is partnering with the East Central Illinois Children's Dyslexia Center.

That was a perfect fit; Miller has dyslexia, so it was a nice opportunity to help out kids he related to.

"It meant a lot to me to be able to give to them," Miller said.

He connected with that organization via Deanna Witzel, who owns several Vermilion County McDonald's with husband Don.

Their son, Rob, is a board member at the Children's Dyslexia Center and knew Miller from McDonald's events.

"I told him about what we're doing, how we're trying to help kids that struggle with reading and all the kind of ripple effect that comes with that," Witzel said. "He jumped all over it. He loved the idea."

'Strong role model'

The way Witzel saw Miller "jump all over" his cause is familiar to Brown and others at the Boys and Girls Club.

Brown said she has seen him evolve as he became a father, but one thing about Miller hasn't changed: He's a great motivator.

"You can't be around him for five minutes before he's got everybody in the room just pumped up, ready to go after a project or, you know, to just feel confident about moving forward as an organization," Brown said. "He's been a really good, strong role model as a board member, and we're really going to miss him."

Miller's term ends in June, so that's when he can fully step away from organizing, though his Jersey Mike's charity projects won't go anywhere.

He's looking forward to time off after 14 straight years on the board, but he isn't confident at all that the break will last.

"I'm sure I'll get the itch again, kind of like I got the itch to be self-employed," Miller said.

Until then, he's just going to focus on business, family and especially Jackson, who he says will be a Boys and Girls Club member one day, too — "of course."