PART 2:
Van Jones accepts an award at Global Green USA’s 12th Annual Green Cross Millennium Awards on June 14, 2008, in Santa Monica, California.
Several Dream staffers defended Jones, however, and blamed the organization’s management team for the tumult and zealous spending. “It’s like your mother can’t be responsible for everything bad you do in your life,” one of his allies contended.
In private, Jones appears to have harbored doubts about Dream’s efficacy, former employees said, since he chose not to funnel much of his $100 million award into the organization.
Born to two educators in Jackson, Tennessee, Jones was a “stereotypical geek,” his twin sister, Angela, told The New Yorker in 2009. His parents named him Anthony, but on the “first day of his freshman year” at the University of Tennessee at Martin, Jones started going by Van, he told the outlet. The moniker, he determined, had “a little touch of nobility, but at the same time [was] not overboard.”
After graduating, Jones earned a degree from Yale Law School, then entered the world of nonprofits and public service. He co-founded the Ella Baker Center in 1996, followed by Color of Change (focused on racial justice) in 2005 and Green For All around the end of 2007.
Green For All later merged with some of Jones’ other initiatives, and over time, the group’s budget expanded. In 2019, Dream received more than $5 million in contributions, according to public filings. The next year, thanks to Bezos’ $10 million award, that figure quadrupled.
Green For All quickly went on a hiring spree, former employees said, and its overhead swelled. In all, Dream’s expenses rose from $6.1 million in 2020 to $10.9 million in 2021; contributions continued to rise that year as well.
Multiple former staffers said that Green For All’s leaders struggled to form a coherent plan. “No one was sure what we were doing or what our strategy was,” one ex-employee said. At one point, the person added, Green For All decided to focus on helping promote sustainability and environmental justice in 10 cities. “[That] sounds great until you think about how we’ve never worked local before. We didn’t have a presence in these 10 cities.”
Many of the locations already had personnel or local nonprofits tackling similar issues, the former employee said. The person recalled sending emails to local groups asking if they wanted Green For All’s help. “They’d say, ‘What do you have to offer?’ And we’d say, ‘We don’t know yet.’”
According to Samuel Brunson, who researches nonprofits at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, organizations that receive large grants from a single entity run the risk of overspending. If the nonprofit uses their windfall “on something infrastructural, something that would last them, that’s not a terrible thing. But if they do it for hiring… that means they need to keep fundraising to keep paying salaries,” he said. “So it seems like a significant risk if they’re using it to spend on ongoing expenses.”
A spokesperson for Dream insisted that the group “has never been in a stronger place financially,” adding that it had hired staff after receiving Bezos’ $10 million grant and is “proud of the work they’ve been able to accomplish thus far.” The group’s list of successes, he said, include generating 11,318 signatures to petition for more equity and justice in the Inflation Reduction Act, participating in more than 30 events, and launching a program to “help federal agencies meet equity goals.”
Jones, he continued, has also routed money from Bezos’ $100 million award through Dream to create a “justice innovation prize”—which will give grants to “the best ideas to disrupt the prison industry”—and to fund similar efforts at social entrepreneurship.
The alleged issues at Green For All have not just been financial. Another former employee said the group has been unwaveringly committed to achieving bipartisan consensus for its policies—one of Jones’ frequent talking points. (His podcast, Uncommon Ground, centered on this theme.)
The approach may sound pragmatic, but to the employee, it manifested as building relationships with center and right-wing groups who were ideologically opposed to many of the activists’ goals. “I know who [is] on our side… and who’s just not going to be there,” the former employee said.
Van Jones accepts an award at Global Green USA’s 12th Annual Green Cross Millennium Awards on June 14, 2008, in Santa Monica, California.
Vince Bucci/Getty Images
Several Dream staffers defended Jones, however, and blamed the organization’s management team for the tumult and zealous spending. “It’s like your mother can’t be responsible for everything bad you do in your life,” one of his allies contended.
In private, Jones appears to have harbored doubts about Dream’s efficacy, former employees said, since he chose not to funnel much of his $100 million award into the organization.
Born to two educators in Jackson, Tennessee, Jones was a “stereotypical geek,” his twin sister, Angela, told The New Yorker in 2009. His parents named him Anthony, but on the “first day of his freshman year” at the University of Tennessee at Martin, Jones started going by Van, he told the outlet. The moniker, he determined, had “a little touch of nobility, but at the same time [was] not overboard.”
After graduating, Jones earned a degree from Yale Law School, then entered the world of nonprofits and public service. He co-founded the Ella Baker Center in 1996, followed by Color of Change (focused on racial justice) in 2005 and Green For All around the end of 2007.
Green For All later merged with some of Jones’ other initiatives, and over time, the group’s budget expanded. In 2019, Dream received more than $5 million in contributions, according to public filings. The next year, thanks to Bezos’ $10 million award, that figure quadrupled.
Green For All quickly went on a hiring spree, former employees said, and its overhead swelled. In all, Dream’s expenses rose from $6.1 million in 2020 to $10.9 million in 2021; contributions continued to rise that year as well.
Multiple former staffers said that Green For All’s leaders struggled to form a coherent plan. “No one was sure what we were doing or what our strategy was,” one ex-employee said. At one point, the person added, Green For All decided to focus on helping promote sustainability and environmental justice in 10 cities. “[That] sounds great until you think about how we’ve never worked local before. We didn’t have a presence in these 10 cities.”
Many of the locations already had personnel or local nonprofits tackling similar issues, the former employee said. The person recalled sending emails to local groups asking if they wanted Green For All’s help. “They’d say, ‘What do you have to offer?’ And we’d say, ‘We don’t know yet.’”
According to Samuel Brunson, who researches nonprofits at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, organizations that receive large grants from a single entity run the risk of overspending. If the nonprofit uses their windfall “on something infrastructural, something that would last them, that’s not a terrible thing. But if they do it for hiring… that means they need to keep fundraising to keep paying salaries,” he said. “So it seems like a significant risk if they’re using it to spend on ongoing expenses.”
A spokesperson for Dream insisted that the group “has never been in a stronger place financially,” adding that it had hired staff after receiving Bezos’ $10 million grant and is “proud of the work they’ve been able to accomplish thus far.” The group’s list of successes, he said, include generating 11,318 signatures to petition for more equity and justice in the Inflation Reduction Act, participating in more than 30 events, and launching a program to “help federal agencies meet equity goals.”
Jones, he continued, has also routed money from Bezos’ $100 million award through Dream to create a “justice innovation prize”—which will give grants to “the best ideas to disrupt the prison industry”—and to fund similar efforts at social entrepreneurship.
The alleged issues at Green For All have not just been financial. Another former employee said the group has been unwaveringly committed to achieving bipartisan consensus for its policies—one of Jones’ frequent talking points. (His podcast, Uncommon Ground, centered on this theme.)
The approach may sound pragmatic, but to the employee, it manifested as building relationships with center and right-wing groups who were ideologically opposed to many of the activists’ goals. “I know who [is] on our side… and who’s just not going to be there,” the former employee said.
