Non-profit organizations
By 1996, Jones founded a new umbrella NGO, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He operated out of "a closet-like office" within the space of Eva Paterson, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee, and used his personal computer.
In 1996–1997, Jones and PoliceWatch led a campaign to gain the firing of officer Marc Andaya from the San Francisco Police Department. Andaya was accused of excessive force in the in-custody death in 1995 of Aaron Williams, an unarmed black man who fought on the street with several officers. There was community outrage about his death and pressure on the department to bring justice against Andaya, who witnesses saw kick Williams in the head. In the year after the incident, the press reported that Andaya had a record of incidents of misconduct in the 1980s. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in addition that Andaya was named in 10 complaints between 1983 and 1993, eight of them allegedly for misuse of physical force, when he was a policeman with the Oakland Police Department. Investigation revealed more brutality complaints in Oakland and two lawsuits against him; the San Francisco Police Commission voted to fire Andaya in June 1997 for falsifying his application to the department.
In 1999 and 2000, Jones led a campaign to defeat Proposition 21, which would increase "penalties for a variety of violent crimes and required more juvenile offenders to be tried as adults." He worked to mobilize a student protest movement against the proposition; this effort made national headlines, but it ultimately imploded. He began to work for more solidarity and building broader alliances across politics and class to achieve goals.
The proposition was passed by voters, part of a nationwide wave of states' increasing punishments for crimes. This has led to increasingly high rates of incarceration in the United States, especially of minorities. In 2001, Jones and the Ella Baker Center launched the "Books Not Bars" campaign. From 2001 to 2003, he led an effort to block the construction of a proposed "Super-Jail for Youth" in Oakland's Alameda County. Books Not Bars later launched a statewide campaign to transform California's juvenile justice system.
During the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, Jones served as Arianna Huffington's statewide grassroots director.
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Jones and James Rucker co-founded a Web-based grassroots organization to address Black issues, called Color of Change. Color of Change's mission, as described on its website, is as follows: "ColorOfChange.org exists to strengthen Black America's political voice. Our goal is to empower our members—Black Americans and our allies—to make government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone."
By 2005, Jones had begun promoting eco-capitalism and environmental justice. In 2005 the Ella Baker Center expanded its vision beyond the immediate concerns of policing, declaring that "If we really wanted to help our communities escape the cycle of incarceration, we had to start focusing on job, wealth and health creation." In 2005, Jones and the Ella Baker Center produced the "Social Equity Track" for the United Nations' World Environment Day celebration, held that year in San Francisco.
The Green-Collar Jobs Campaign was Jones's first effort to combine his goals of improving racial and economic equality with mitigating environmental damage. He worked to establish the nation's first "Green Jobs Corps" in Oakland. On October 20, 2008, the City of Oakland formally launched the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, a public-private partnership to "provide local Oakland residents with job training, support, and work experience so that they can independently pursue careers in the new energy economy."
Jones published his first book, The Green Collar Economy, in 2008. He describes his "viable plan for solving the two biggest issues facing the country today—the economy and the environment." The book received favorable reviews from Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle, Carl Pope, and Arianna Huffington.
In the book, Jones contended that invention and investment was needed to transition from a pollution-based "grey economy" and into a healthy new "green economy". Jones wrote:
We are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely.
So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs—and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed. That means, in large part, electing leaders who will pass bills to aid them. We cannot realistically proceed without a strong alliance between the best of the business world—and everyone else.
Jones had a limited publicity budget and no national media platform. But a viral, web-based marketing strategy earned the book a #12 debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Jones and Green For All used "a combination of emails and phone calls to friends, bloggers, and a network of activists" to reach millions of people. Due to the marketing campaign's grassroots nature, Jones said that achieving bestseller status was a victory for the entire green-collar jobs movement. In August 2008 Jones was featured on the grassroots radio program Sea Change Radio.
In June 2011, Jones worked with MoveOn.org to launch the Rebuild the Dream campaign, which was intended to start a progressive American Dream movement to counter the Tea Party movement. Following a kickoff on June 23, 2011, Rebuild the Dream announced a "Contract for the American Dream" and held house meetings in July. It was intended "to give the progressive mass movement that rose up to elect Barack Obama a new banner to march under". The launch included performances by The Roots and a DJ set by artist Shepard Fairey. In August 2012, Prince announced a series of concerts in Chicago to support Rebuild the Dream. Jones claimed 127,000 people had become involved in the movement by the end of July 2011.
In April 2012, Jones published his second book, titled Rebuild the Dream. It debuted at number 16 on the New York Times Best-Seller list.
Jones is President of Dream.Org, a "social enterprise and incubator for powerful ideas and innovations designed to uplift and empower the most vulnerable in our society".
In early 2015, Jones launched #YesWeCode, an initiative aiming to "teach 100,000 low-income kids to write code". The musician Prince appeared at the Essence Festival to help support the launch. Jones credits his longtime friend Prince with the idea to form #YesWeCode. #YesWeCode has hosted several hackathons, including one in Detroit in partnership with MSNBC, and Oakland. In an interview on CNN on April 21, 2016, hours after the musician Prince's death, Jones revealed that Prince had secretly contributed to the funding of #YesWeCode. Jones also revealed that the musician had been a major philanthropist who preferred to give anonymously to a wide spectrum of charitable causes. Prince used Jones and others as surrogates to distribute his gifts. As a Jehovah's Witness, Prince did not want to receive public credit for his charitable work. Jones was among the 20 people who gathered for a private memorial service at Paisley Park after Prince's death.
In 2015, Jones launched #cut50, an organization focused on bi-partisan solutions to criminal justice reform issues. The name referred to the group's goal of reducing the total US incarcerated population by 50% over a ten-year period. In March 2015 #cut50 hosted a "bi-partisan summit" with Republican Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, to promote bi-partisan solutions.
In November 2015, #cut50 gained the support of singer Alicia Keys. In 2016, Keys made a video appeal to Congressman Paul Ryan asking him to "be her Valentine" and commit to giving legislation on criminal justice reform a vote. Ryan made this commitment days later. #cut50 received additional celebrity support from "100 A-List celebrities" including Amy Schumer, Steph Curry, Edward Norton, Jesse Williams, Chris Pine, Russell Simmons, Shonda Rhimes, Russell Brand, Jessica Chastain, and Piper Kerman.
In May 2018, Jones and other members of #cut50 met with Jared Kushner and President Donald Trump at the White House to discuss a criminal justice reform bill.
Working with the Trump White House and Kim Kardashian, Jones and #cut50 were involved in helping to pass the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill The New York Times called "the most substantial changes in a generation" to national crime and sentencing laws. A 2024 review by the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than 44,000 people had been released under the law and over 4,000 had received reduced sentences, and that the recidivism rate among participants was about 10 percent.
Jones founded Advocates for Opioid Recovery together with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy.
Jones has served on the boards of numerous environmental and nonprofit organizations, including Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), 1Sky, the National Apollo Alliance, Social Venture Network, Rainforest Action Network, Bioneers, Julia Butterfly Hill's "Circle of Life" organization, and Free Press. He currently serves on the board of trustees at Demos.
In 2019, Jones was announced as the CEO of REFORM Alliance, an initiative founded by Jay-Z, Meek Mill, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, among others. The initiative aims to reform the criminal justice system and has received funding from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
