As the world transitions into acceptance over Prince’s sudden death, long-time friends — and tax records — are revealing a little-known part of his legacy: his charitable work. Prince’s Jehovah’s Witness faith prohibited him from speaking publicly about it, but Van Jones, a close friend, thinks we all need to know.
“He would see something in the news, and start calling people – ‘We need to do something about this.’ He was kind of like the 911 of the celebrity class.”
Prince donated to the organization Jones founded, called Green for All, a national organization working for a green economy. Jones said he was its public face, but Prince provided money for it — allowing families to install solar panels on their homes in Oakland, California, for instance.
The groundbreaking musician also contributed to public radio, the Harlem’s Children’s Zone and Black Lives Matter.
“Prince was a huge fan of Black Lives Matter. He believed in young people, and their ability to change the world. He hoped that Black Lives Matter would become a movement for economic uplift — using their creativity to start businesses,” Jones told CNN.
After the Trayvon Martin verdict Prince helped found Yes We Code, an organization comprised of 15 technology companies that says it wants to help “100,000 young men and women in low-opportunity backgrounds find success in the tech sector.”
Publicly available federal tax records show Prince founded Love 4 Another Charities, which has donated millions of dollars to schools, shelters and community programs in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and his native Minneapolis; and to organizations and schools in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Yet he often expressed his love in a more personal way, Jones said.
“I guarantee you, anybody struggling, anywhere in the world, he was sending checks, he was making phone calls, but he did not want it to be known publicly, and he did not want us to say it but I’m going to say it. The world needs to know that it wasn’t just the music. The music was one way he tried to help the world but he was helping every single day of his life.”
Featured image is a screengrab from YouTube.
