Building a Sustainable Mission

We’ve learned a great deal from the publication of Freedom of Money. People purchased that book because they wanted to read about CZ’s remarkable life story, the development of Binance, and his thoughts on where the digital economy may take the world. Given the time he spent in an American prison, many readers also wanted to understand why he voluntarily chose to come to the United States, what he learned from that experience, and how he viewed the government’s posture toward crypto during that period.

I got to know CZ in the context of his imprisonment. While he prepared to serve his sentence, and during the time that he served in prison, we communicated every day. I listened, learned, and asked questions. Those conversations helped me think more deeply about how to develop Prison Professors in a sustainable manner.

Officials authorized CZ’s transfer from the federal prison in Lompoc, California, to a halfway house near Sherman Oaks on August 13, 2024. Since he would need a place to go during that transition, our nonprofit rented office space. It gave him a place to go every day.

During one of our conversations, I spoke with CZ about ideas I had to improve outcomes in America’s prison system. He asked what kind of budget I would need to make those changes.

To accomplish our mission, I explained that we would need to build in stages over several years.

• First, we would need to build relationships with government leaders so that I could enter more prisons and introduce people to our programs.

• Second, we would need to persuade more people in prison to memorialize the steps they were taking to prepare for success upon release.

• Third, we would need to collect data that could help us show whether people who worked through Prison Professors programs were more likely to succeed upon release.

• Fourth, we would need to use that data to build support for reforms that would open more opportunities for people to earn freedom through merit.

I anticipated that we would need an annual budget of between $2 million and $3 million to provide free, self-directed educational resources for people in prison. I could not estimate the full amount with precision because I did not know how long it would take before tablets became widely available throughout the prison system. Until we had tablets, we would need to print and distribute softcover books to the people who participated in our programs. With thousands of people participating, we would need sufficient resources to accommodate those requests, and we would need a budget that could carry us through several years.

CZ offered to provide initial funding. My responsibility would be to build a system that would show our mission’s values to others and persuade more people to get involved. Over time, I set a goal of building more awareness, with hopes of finding more people who would want to support the mission. We needed to find business organizations and individuals who would want to become part of something larger than their own lives.

A Web 3.0 Community Forms Around the Mission

Once CZ released Freedom of Money, his global audience learned about his support for Prison Professors. One group became so inspired that they used the #BNB platform and Web 3.0 technology to become part of the mission. They relied on the #BNB ecosystem to create a financial instrument known as the Prison Professors token, $PP.

The idea behind the token was simple. Anyone, from anywhere in the world, could support the mission. The organizers launched their own website, PrisonProfessorsToken.com, to describe what they were doing.

I appreciated the community’s transparency. They expressed that they were building an organic movement specifically to support the mission of Prison Professors, and that neither CZ nor I were involved in creating their community. That same group had been instrumental in launching support for Giggle Academy, CZ’s nonprofit venture to provide free educational resources to anyone in the world.

More than 1,000 people became part of that Web 3.0 community to support Prison Professors. Together, their work generated more than $400,000 in resources. We reserve all those resources to advance our mission, consistent with what we wrote in our concept paper.

I commit to reserving all BNB resources that come from the Prison Professors community and will not tap into them until we reach a meaningful scale, at least 10,000 people actively engaged in our programs, building profiles, completing courses, and preparing for success after prison.

I learned a great deal from that Web 3.0 community. People from around the world want to use Web 3.0 tools to solve real-world problems. Even people who were not Americans wanted to participate in a movement that would build solutions for the problems created by mass incarceration. Our country incarcerates more people than any other, and many of those people serve sentences that are far too long. Collateral consequences, including intergenerational cycles of recidivism and poverty, follow for those who do not prepare.

I am grateful to CZ for donating resources that would allow us to advance our mission. I am also grateful to the community that formed around the Prison Professors token. Their support showed us that our mission can inspire people who may never have had a direct connection to the prison system, but who still believe that people should have pathways to prepare, contribute, and earn freedom through merit.

Why We Need a Broader Strategy

At the same time, our responsibility is to build carefully. A nonprofit cannot depend entirely on one donor, one funding source, one technology, or one community. If we want to serve people in prison for decades to come, we need to build systems that will remain durable through economic cycles, policy changes, and shifts in public attention.

That means we have to think like builders, and focus on results.

• We need to develop multiple channels of support. 

• We need to create value in ways that people can understand. 

• We need to show measurable outcomes. 

• We need to demonstrate that the work we do benefits not only people in prison, but also families, employers, communities, and taxpayers.

The prison system affects more than the person serving time. It affects spouses, children, parents, employers, neighborhoods, and future generations. When a person uses time in prison to prepare for success, society benefits. When that person develops stronger communication skills, stronger work habits, stronger values, and a stronger record of accountability, that person becomes better positioned to contribute upon release.

Our challenge is to help more people see that connection.

For many years, criminal justice reform has remained a niche conversation. People who have been directly affected by the system care deeply. Families care deeply. Advocates care deeply. But many people outside that circle do not think about the issue unless a news story brings it to their attention.

We want to see changes that improve outcomes in our nation’s criminal justice system. We want to build a bridge between people who care about quality products, entrepreneurship, community, and opportunity, and the people inside our nation’s prisons who are working to prepare for better outcomes.

That thinking led us to explore a new possibility: building a consumer brand that can advance the mission.

Exploring a Consumer Brand

Last week, I met with Jeff, the founder and CEO of a company that currently operates 21 supermarkets in Nevada, California, and Washington. Jeff’s company has four additional supermarkets in various stages of development. He intends to grow the company to more than 100 stores across the globe, serving a niche market with strong customer loyalty.

Jeff has been a long-time supporter of Prison Professors. I asked for the meeting to discuss jobs. His company employs more than 1,500 people, and I wanted to build a bridge that would open opportunities for people who could show that they were using Prison Professors as a resource to prepare for success upon release.

During our conversation, Jeff told me that he was preparing for a trip to Japan. When I asked what he would be doing there, he told me he had been in discussions with a manufacturing company that produces water infused with hydrogen. He was negotiating rights to distribute hydrogen water in the United States, both as a consumer brand he could carry in his supermarkets and as a product he could sell to other stores.

I continued to ask questions. Then I asked whether he would consider allowing Prison Professors to develop a brand around that consumer product.

Everyone needs water. If we could build a brand around the water, we could make it mission-aligned, with 100 percent of the profits after costs going to support our mission.

Jeff said he liked the idea. Once he obtained the distribution rights, he agreed to advance the product and open conversations that could allow us to sell it. His company could provide logistics. As with the Web 3.0 community, this collaboration could lead more people to support the Prison Professors mission, generating resources to support the work.

Once we had the product, we would have a new resource to develop. We could potentially partner with celebrities, athletes, business leaders, and others who would support the Prison Professors movement. The effort could bring benefits to the Web 3.0 community, while also bringing awareness to real-use cases for #BNB and mission-driven commerce.

That is the opportunity.

If we build the right kind of consumer brand, every purchase could become a small act of support for people working to prepare for success after prison. Every package could carry a message. Every customer could learn that people in prison are not statistics. They are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, neighbors, employees, entrepreneurs, and future contributors.

The water brand would need to stand on its own. It would need to compete in the marketplace. We should not expect people to buy a product solely because it supports a cause. The product must create value for the consumer first. Then the mission gives people an additional reason to care, share, and participate, as with the Web 3.0 community.

That same principle guides our work with people in prison. We do not want participation trophies. We want people to create real value. We want them to read, write, learn, document, and build records that others can evaluate. We want them to prepare in ways that lead to measurable outcomes.

A consumer brand should follow that same logic. It should be excellent because excellence builds trust.

Connecting Commerce With Advocacy

The purpose of this consumer brand would be broader than revenue. Revenue allows us to distribute books, build courses, improve technology, collect data, and advocate for reforms. But the larger purpose is awareness.

A strong consumer brand could introduce Prison Professors to new communities. It could open conversations with employers. It could bring more attention to the importance of self-directed learning. It could show that people coming out of prison need more than sympathy. They need pathways, expectations, accountability, and opportunities to prove themselves.

If the brand succeeds, it could help us fund several parts of the mission:

• Printing and distributing books to people in prison.

• Building and improving courses that teach self-directed preparation.

• Supporting the profile platform, where participants memorialize their work.

• Collecting data that shows who is preparing and how they are progressing.

• Developing reports that help stakeholders understand the value of incentivizing excellence.

• Building relationships with employers who may be willing to consider people who have documented their preparation.

• Supporting advocacy efforts that help more people earn higher levels of liberty at the soonest appropriate time.

Those goals align with the lessons we have learned from business leaders like CZ, from Web 3.0 builders, and from people inside prisons. Sustainable change requires more than good intentions. It requires systems that bring results.