*Van Jones has been kicked out of a nonprofit he founded amid internal disputes and financial mismanagement, according to reports.
This is the same organization that received a $100 million grant from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2021. Bezos gifted Jones the grant for his philanthropic work via Dream.org. Jones launched the initiative in 2015 but he was recently ousted from the board, according to The Daily Beast.
Jones’ environmental advocacy group Green for All, which operates under Dream.org, received a $10 million Bezos grant three years ago and has since been burning through the cash, the New York Post reports. This is apparently what prompted Jones’ break with the nonprofit’s board of directors.
“Quite a few people have questions about the fiscal stewardship that Dream.org has had,” said CeCe Grant, who served as the group’s director of government affairs before departing in April, per The Post.
Despite never having formulated a coherent plan of action, Bezos’ cash infusion sparked a hiring spree that nearly doubled Green for All’s expenses. There were layoffs as a result of overspending, according to sources – who blamed Jones for not paying attention to the staffing needs.
Jones recently shared with Us Weekly how he’s investing the $100 million that Bezos gave him.
“I knew immediately I wanted to disrupt these systems that have been holding underestimated communities back. I knew I wanted to do something to disrupt the for-profit prison system, to disrupt the systems that put a lot of pollution in our communities and lead to poverty,” Jones told the outlet.
Jones reportedly has 10 years to invest the “miracle money” from Bezos.
“It felt like winning the lottery, except I never bought a ticket,” Jones said.
According to Us, Jones has invested in the Philadelphia-based non-profit Beat The Block, which provides paid training to men ages 18 – 24 to help them attain their professional and personal goals.
“We found an unbelievable program [Beat The Block] that was incentivizing peace on the streets by going to folks who were hanging on street corners, getting in trouble and saying, ‘We will pay you for a 100 days to get off the street corner [and] come up with a plan for your life,’” he explained. “My theory now is that the financial incentives to do bad are very high in a lot of the communities I care about and the financial incentives to do good are very weak. That’s what I want to go after.”
Additionally, Jones partnered with CodePath, which strives to create a diverse generation of engineers, CTOs, and founders.
“In these tough neighborhoods, education is a way out. That’s how my family got out of poverty. That’s what I focus on with my kids,” said Jones, who’s a father of three. “But you’ve got to educate kids in the right stuff. And technology is everything now. So if we are not educating the next generation of Black, brown and underestimated kids in technology, they’re going to be left behind.
“Maybe some of those kids who are going to come out as CodePath graduates might go on to be the next [Tesla and SpaceX founder] Elon Musk, they might go on to be the next [former Facebook Chief Operating Officer] Sheryl Sandberg.”
Meanwhile, Jones’s spokesperson said he “continues to work with Dream.org in the justice innovation space and beyond.”
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