What Is Van Jones Doing With Bezos’ $100 Million?

It has been eight months since Jeff Bezos exited the tip of his phallic rocket, peered out below a cowboy hat, and lavished $100 million apiece on philanthropic chef Jose Andrés and CNN commentator Van Jones, the inaugural recipients of his somewhat vaguely titled Courage & Civility Awards.

The gifts were earmarked for charitable causes but otherwise came with no strings attached. “No bureaucracy. No committees. They just do what they want,” Bezos said at the time.

Andrés, who feeds masses of people after humanitarian disasters through his nonprofit World Central Kitchen, says he is already spending some of his millions to help war-torn Ukrainians. The group is preparing meals 24 hours a day at eight border crossings, assisting local restaurants in 12 cities, and providing food to refugees in Romania, Moldova, and Hungary.

As for Jones? As of this week, he had revealed few specifics about his plans for the massive charity windfall and through his spokesperson declined to offer comment for this article. After The Daily Beast reached out, however, Jones posted an update to his Facebook page on Thursday night noting that he was “vetting opportunities” and “conducting due diligence,” adding that the award gave him a 10-year window to disburse the funds.

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The contrast between Andrés’ and Jones’ visibility may reflect their preparedness to quickly handle that much cash, said Benjamin Soskis, a senior research associate in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute. Prior to Bezos’ surprise handout, Andrés already had a track record of running a charitable group on a very large scale, so “it's not a huge surprise that he's continued to do the work he's been doing... With Jones, I think that was less clear.”

Jones does have a background in the nonprofit world, particularly in the sphere of criminal justice reform. He co-founded Dream Corps, which supports reducing the U.S. prison population, and the racial justice organization Color of Change.

He was also the founding CEO of Reform Alliance, a nonprofit focused on similar issues that launched following the incarceration of the rapper Meek Mill.

Jones’ work has also generated controversy, including when he boosted President Donald Trump’s police reform policies on CNN in 2020—allegedly without telling viewers he had collaborated with Jared Kushner on the project, as The Daily Beast reported that summer. (Jones denied that he had attended any meetings on the subject. He noted in a podcast last year, however, that he “took a lot of flak” for working with the Trump administration to help “people behind bars.”)

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The gift from Bezos in July apparently caught both Andrés and Jones off guard. At the time, Jones told CNN he had received a call from the Amazon founder out of the blue just days before the announcement.

Jones subsequently attended the press conference in Texas after Bezos’ space flight, where he genuflected before the world’s second-richest man. “Sometimes dreams come true,” he said of the award. “You have lifted the ceilings off of the dreams of humanity today.”

The hastiness of the gift—which had the theatrics of a public relations stunt—was seen by some as an attempt by Bezos to mute criticism of billionaire space tourism and to match publicity his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, had received for her record-breaking philanthropic efforts.

“Sometimes Scott's approach is [characterized] as throwing money out of an airplane. And it's not. There is immense amounts of research and scrutiny and attention that precedes the gift,” said Soskis. “From a distance, it was not clear that Bezos did that.”

To the extent that Jones has not yet announced plans for the funds, Soskis placed the blame on Bezos for not giving him adequate notice. But he said that going eight months without offering specifics “doesn't look great.”

Elizabeth Dale, an associate professor of nonprofit leadership at Seattle University, told The Daily Beast that Jones’ lack of transparency is explainable, since “World Central Kitchen could much more easily accept that influx of cash,” while Jones had to determine “how to spread that money around.”

The CNN talking head has offered limited details about his plans. In an interview in October, when Insider asked him how he would implement the funds, he replied, “Uh, very carefully.” He said he would announce more information in 2022 and that his efforts would likely align with his prior work “to disrupt prisons and pollution and poverty.”

He was slightly more enlightening that same month during the inaugural episode of his podcast, Uncommon Ground, which featured Andrés as a guest.

“One of the challenges when you’re a do-gooder, most people see me as a guy who’s been on TV making commentary. They don’t understand,” Jones said. “If you see me sitting next to Anderson Cooper for five minutes on the nightly news, the other 23 hours a day… I was out there doing other things, mainly working with not-for-profit organizations, community organizations.”

Jones said he wanted to take that work “to the next level” by backing efforts to reform the criminal justice system. “I think the entire incarceration industry should be disrupted in the same way that Jeff Bezos disrupted bookstores,” he said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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