Akonadi Foundation’s So Love Can Win Fund provides general support grants of $10,000 to Oakland’s organizers, storytellers, culture bearers, and healers who seek to ignite and implement a radical collective vision of freedom and racial justice.
About So Love Can Win
Akonadi Foundation has over a 20-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.
featuring Isha Clarke from Youth vs. Apocolypse
Today, the So Love Can Win Fund provides grants to organizations, initiatives and projects in Oakland that have a focus in one of the following strategies:
- Organizing – Base-building organizations that mobilize, support, develop, and build power with their members.
- Arts & Culture – Cultural formations that use culture as a tool for racial justice movement building.
- Healing – Healing justice collectives and organizations providing accessible and relevant healing, wellness and self-care practices using an anti-racist political frame.
- Voice – Oakland-focused journalism or narrative efforts that highlight racial justice movement building and/or issues impacting Black, Indigenous or people of color communities with an emphasis on promoting community leadership, mutual aid, and cultural resilience.
In 2022, Akonadi Foundation will disperse a total of $500,000 in two rounds. In Round 1, we awarded grants totaling $310,000. In Round 2, we will award grants totaling $190,000.
Important Dates, Eligibility, and Application Process
FUND DETAILS
IMPORTANT DATES
ELIGIBILITY & WHO CAN APPLY
To be eligible for a 2022 So Love Can Win grant, applicants must:
Applicants must employ at least one of the following strategies:
Organizing
Base-building organizations that mobilize, support, develop, and build power with their members.
Arts & Culture
Cultural formations that use culture as a tool for racial justice movement building.
Healing
Healing justice collectives and organizations providing accessible and relevant healing, wellness and self-care practices using an anti-racist political frame.
Voice
Oakland-focused journalism or narrative efforts that highlight racial justice movement building and/or issues impacting Black, Indigenous or people of color communities with an emphasis on promoting community leadership, mutual aid, and cultural resilience.
Akonadi Foundation will prioritize grant support to the following:
- Organizations with budgets under $500,000.
- Organizations that advance the leadership of women, trans, queer and non-binary communities; immigrant and undocumented communities; and people who are formerly/currently incarcerated and their families
APPLICATION PROCESS
- Applications will be accepted July 18, 2022 through August 19, 2022 5:00pm PST for Round 2.
- 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 never applied for a grant with 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 6, 2022 for Round 2 applications.
- Groups may not receive more than one So Love Can Win grant in 2022.
- Organizations that have been declined in Round 1 are not eligible to re-apply in Round 2.
- 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.
Applicants may apply online or through a scheduled phone interview with a representative of the Akonadi Foundation, if they meet the eligibility requirements.
For a quick tutorial on how to log into our application portal, click here.
Apply online
Please note applications do not need to be finished in one sitting. You may save your progress and resume at a later date.
Apply on the phone
Phone slots are reserved for applicants with accessibility barriers and/or limited technology, as well as applicants who have never applied for a grant with a grantmaking institution.
Meet the Round 1 2022 SLCW Grantee Partners:
- AeroSoul
- Afro Urban Society
- AfroCentric Oakland
- Arab Resource and Organizing Center
- Asian Immigrant Women Advocates
- Asian Refugees United
- BAY-Peace
- Be Imaginative
- Black Joy Parade
- BoomShake Music
- Choices for Freedom Inc
- The Oaklandside (Cityside Journalism Initiative)
- Community Ready Corps (CRC)
- Diamano Coura West African Dance Company
- Oakland Bloom (Floreciendo)
- Freedom Community Clinic
- Fua Dia Congo
- Global Communication Education & Art (GCEA) (Macrobiotic Study Center)
- Mercer Brotherhood
- Ministerio Latino
- Nomadic Press
- Oakland Black Pride
- Oakland Communities United for Equity and Justice
- Oakland Public Conservatory (Music is Extraordinary, Inc)
- Priority Africa Network
- Reclaiming Our Own Transcendence LLC
- SambaFunk!
- San Francisco Bay View Oakland Desk
- Somos Familia
- Trybe Inc.
- Black Gold Storytellers (Write Avenue)