As we celebrate Akonadi Foundation’s 25th anniversary this year, we naturally had to start by speaking to our founders Quinn Delaney and Wayne Jordan and what sparked their desire to create change through philanthropy. What began as a desire for the couple to work more directly with grassroots organizations has grown into an intentional platform for investing in powerful social movements to advance racial justice in Oakland and across the Bay Area.
Q: Why did you want to start a foundation?
Quinn: The enduring and ongoing impact of systemic racism is the lens through which we both saw the world and we wanted to address the issues of youth and family well-being from that perspective. I come from a legal background and saw the string of cases starting with Brown v. Board of Education as laying the groundwork for real change in pursuing the goal of racial justice. The tide started to shift against progress with cases like Regents of University of California v. Bakke, which limited affirmative action, and then the 1996 California ballot measure Prop 209 that ended affirmative action. I felt we needed to fight back.
Prior to starting the foundation, we had a donor-advised fund but realized we wanted to do more. We wanted to be closer to the ground and in deep relationship with communities and organizers, such as the state and local youth-led groups and community organizers fighting Proposition 21, a racist ballot measure in 2000 that targeted and criminalized young people of color. It was important for us to focus on racial justice as the framework for our work.
Wayne: My experience as a Black man growing up through segregation and seeing the slow march toward progress made me interested in pushing further. We still had a long way to go to reach racial equity and I saw the importance of people self-organizing and demanding change as an essential component. Supporting that work became a central motivation for our philanthropy. Now we are at a point in time where we need to push even harder.
Q: What do you remember most vividly about those early days of starting Akonadi and what were you hoping to accomplish?
Quinn: In those early days, we weren’t sure what racial justice grantmaking should look like. We worked with john powell, read his work, and would have conversations to figure out what makes racial justice grantmaking different from good progressive grantmaking. One of our key insights at the time was the importance of building power, investing in the leaders and communities, particularly those who were most affected by systemic racism. We also had a book club internally and with peer funders where we grappled with how to actualize racial justice grantmaking. It was fairly rare to have racial justice as a stated goal – not that we were the only foundation doing it– but they weren’t calling it the same thing. By calling it racial justice and sharing reports and convenings, we were trying to influence other bigger foundations. Despite being small, we convened, collaborated with other funders and created pooled funds and aligned giving – whatever it took to bring more people to the table to advance racial justice.
Wayne: We were funding all over the country at the time. But since we weren’t a big foundation, we thought the work we were doing could still have an impact across the country by proving it here in Oakland so that’s how we decided to focus on working locally.
Q: How did you decide on the name Akonadi Foundation?
Wayne: We knew we didn’t want to name the foundation after ourselves and we wanted a name that talked about justice without literally saying “justice”. After some searching, we discovered the name Akonadi, who is a West African goddess of justice, so we thought that fit nicely.
Q: Looking back over 25 years, what are some of the moments or movements that capture Akonadi Foundation’s impact in Oakland and beyond?
Quinn: In 2009, Oakland Unified School District didn’t offer the classes that students needed to get into the UC/CSU system uniformly across all their high schools. So, the students organized a campaign to push OUSD to align high school graduation requirements with UC/CSU college entry requirements and Akonadi funded them over several years. They ended up winning at the school board level so now every OUSD student has access to all the classes that met those requirements .
Another one is the launch of our annual Racial Justice Poster Project in observance of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This project is symbolic of our commitment to culture within power building and movement building. I love that you can see these posters all over the country.
Wayne: There was a campaign organized by our grantee partner Black Organizing Project to get police officers out of Oakland Unified School District schools. That was quite rewarding to have cops taken off campuses, so that our kids were not profiled just for going to school or having a few words with a classmate.
Q: What has it been like to watch the foundation grow over the years and become a team of six today?
Quinn: It is funny to reflect on the early days of Akonadi Foundation when I was setting up all the systems and conducting site visits all over the country, from the Bay Area to Washington DC and Chicago. Now we have a staff of six professionals who bring so much expertise to the work. After running Akonadi for 15 years, I realized that in order to take the work to the next level, we needed different leadership.
Lateefah Simon came in as CEO in 2016 and accomplished so much. Now, under Ray Colmenar’s leadership, we have a new strategic direction which builds on Lateefah’s good work and charts a way forward to focus on building governing power. Especially in the current climate where there is a backlash against racial equity, the new strategy will help build the strength of community organizing in Oakland which is necessary to bring us closer to racial justice. I am excited to see how the foundation’s work creates space for organizations and community leaders to build and excel.
Q: As you look toward the future, what role do you see Akonadi or other foundations playing to be a source of positive change?
Quinn: The current environment is fraught. The Trump administration is directly challenging the very mission of our organization. This really is an existential moment, both for us and all of our partners and the broader movement. Akonadi Foundation and other foundations must stand strong and boldly assert the legitimacy and importance of racial justice as a bedrock principle of our society. We do that by speaking out; we do that by resourcing our partners; we do that by backing up organizers and activists; we do that by standing together. As we continue to build power in our communities to address this threat, we are also building toward the future. The words of Martin Luther King still resonate: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Q: Any final message you’d like to share with the community?
Quinn: I’ve learned so much from the people we’ve worked with and the people we’ve given grants to. I am grateful for your collaboration and commitment to this work.
Wayne: The fight continues. I believe the work of Akonadi and its partners is perhaps more important now than any other time during our history. We intend to continue our efforts supporting the amazing work of the community to fight for racial justice for everyone. Let’s move on together!
We look forward to building on the legacy Quinn and Wayne started and continuing to work collaboratively with organizers, advocates and creatives, as well as with our peers in philanthropy, to build a racially just Oakland where everyone can live with dignity and prosperity. Stay tuned for more stories and reflections in our 25th anniversary series!
