Akonadi Foundation’s So Love Can Win Fund provides project support grants to Oakland’s organizers, storytellers, culture bearers, and healers who seek to ignite and implement a radical collective vision of freedom and racial justice. Grant awards range between $10,000 to $30,000.
About
So Love Can Win
Akonadi Foundation has a 25-year history of providing grant funds to racial justice organizations in times of political unrest, economic fragility, and community crisis. The Foundation’s So Love Can Win Fund originally launched in 2016 in response to critical national and local events that challenged a sense of safety for communities of color, with the intention to spark imagination and seed a vision of a safe, healed, and racially just Oakland.
In 2025, Akonadi will disperse a total of up to $400,000 in one round through the So Love Can Win Fund. The fund seeks to support work that fosters belonging and radical imagination for racial justice movement building in Oakland through the following:
- Invest in storytelling that advances and amplifies narratives of togetherness and belonging.
- Invest in spaces that bring people together and create opportunities for deeper understanding and collective action.
- Fund projects and initiatives that foster collaboration and partnership between movement leaders, community leaders, and artists/culture bearers.
Important Dates, Eligibility, and Application Process
FUND DETAILS
IMPORTANT DATES
ELIGIBILITY & WHO CAN APPLY
To be eligible for a 2025 So Love Can Win grant, applicants must:
- Be an organization, group, formation or collective, not an individual
- Be based in Oakland
- Note: We are fairly strict about only funding organizations that have a physical address in Oakland and whose primary work happens in Oakland. We have made some exceptions in cases where an organization might have an outside address but run an extremely important program in Oakland.
- Demonstrate a history of work to advance racial justice
- Have 501(c)(3) status or are fiscally sponsored. Akonadi is continuing its partnership with the Social Good Fund, which will waive its normal fiscal sponsorship fees to groups that have been approved for a So Love Can Win grant and are in need of a fiscal sponsor. If you need a fiscal sponsor, please let us know in the So Love Can Win application.
- Submit a project budget in addition to the proposal
Akonadi Foundation will prioritize grant support to the following:
- Organizations with budgets under $500,000.
APPLICATION PROCESS
- Applications will be accepted July 15, 2025, through August 5, 2025, 5:00pm PT.
- Applicants may apply online or through a scheduled phone interview with a representative of the Akonadi Foundation. Phone interviews are reserved for applicants with accessibility barriers and/or limited technology, as well as applicants who have limited experience submitting proposals to a grantmaking institution. If you do not meet one of these criteria, your request for a phone interview will be declined.
- Applicants will receive a decision by September 5, 2025.
- No email applications will be accepted. All applications must be submitted through our application portal.
- Checks or electronic transfers will be sent to approved grant partners within two weeks of receipt of a signed contract and payment information.
- Questions? Please reach out to us at solovecanwin [at] akonadi.org. Given the volume of inquiries, please allow a few days for us to respond.
For a quick tutorial on how to log into our application portal, click here.
Please note applications do not need to be completed in one sitting. You may save your progress and resume at a later date.
