Akonadi Foundation is a left-of-center racial-issues grantmaking group based in Oakland, California. The foundation was founded by husband and wife Wayne Jordan and Quinn Delaney, who are major donors to the Democratic Party with strong ties to former President Barack Obama (D).

History

In 2000, the Akonadi Foundation was co-founded by husband and wife Wayne Jordan and Quinn Delaney. The couple had begun their philanthropic careers earlier by setting up a donor-advised fund through the Tides Foundation, which advised them on how to begin large-scale charitable giving. Initially, they targeted community support groups for Black youth, but they later evolved to support broader left-wing social-policy goals. ¹

Delaney and Jordan decided to launch the Akonadi Foundation in response to the passage of Proposition 21 in California, which made sentencing tougher on juvenile criminals. Delaney and Jordan considered Prop 21 to be a racist measure against non-white youth. ² The organization’s mission is to support the development of powerful social change movements to eliminate structural racism.” ³

The foundation’s name is a reference to a traditional Ghanaian deity. ⁴

Grants

Akonadi Foundation has donated to numerous Black Lives Matter-affiliated groups, including Right to the City Alliance, School of Unity and Liberation, the Movement Strategy Center, and People Organized to Win Employment Rights, a San Fransisco-based group which merged with Causa Justa Just Cause. ⁵

Akonadi Foundation has donated to the Hope and Heal Fund, a left-of-center gun control advocacy group controlled by the New Venture Fund. ⁶

Akonadi Foundation is a major funder of Freedom to Thrive (formerly known as Enlace), a left-wing group which seeks to end prison incarceration. ⁷

All in For Oakland

Akonadi Foundation’s All in for Oakland is a program that gives grants to non-white-owned organizations in Oakland which support liberal criminal justice reform for youth. The initiative was launched in 2020 with $12.5 million. The initiative’s grant partners are: the Black Organizing Project, Urban Peace Movement, the Young Women’s Freedom Center, the East Bay Community Law Center, Youth Law Center, Dignity in Schools Campaign California, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, the Justice Reinvestment Coalition, Flourish Agenda, the W. Haywood Burns Institute, and Forward Change. ⁸

So Love Can Win Fund

The So Love Can Win Fund gives grants of $10,000 to Oakland-based community organizers. Its 2022 grant partners include the Afro Urban Society, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Asian Refugees United, Oakland Black Pride, the Freedom Community Clinic, and AfroCentric Oakland. ⁹

Alphabet Diversity Pay

In the late 2010s, the Akonadi Foundation partnered with left-of-center activist investment companies Boston Common Asset Management, Zevin Asset Management, and Trillium Asset Management to file a resolution at Alphabet requiring the tech giant to tie executive pay to diversity targets. In its report, Responsible Investor called the resolution evidence that “racial justice” was an “emerging risk for investors.” ¹⁰

Leadership

Quinn Delaney

Akonadi Foundation co-founder and board chair Quinn Delaney is a former lawyer who worked for her husband’s company, Jordan Real Estate Investments, as well as San Fransisco-based investment bank Hambrecht and Quist. ¹¹ She also worked for the National Center for Youth Law and the ACLU of Northern California, where she served on the board for a decade. ¹²

Delaney sits on the boards of the East Bay Community Foundation, Oakland Museum of California, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the Women Donors Network Action Fund, the Center for Community Change, and the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, ¹³ and she was formerly a board member of the Tides Foundation. ¹⁴ Delaney is a commissioner on the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. ¹⁵

Delaney is an advisor to California Donor Table, Fund Her, Emerge America, and Way to Win. ¹⁶

Delaney has given $5,246,246 to Democratic candidates and PACs since 1992. Her largest recipients have been Hillary Clinton (D), Planned Parenthood Votes, the Women Vote! PAC, and groups supporting Proposition 16 in 2020. ^{17 18} Delaney is part of a four-person group of Democratic mega-donors who, starting in 2018, supported left-wing proseuctors including Chesa Boudin in San Fransisco and George Gascon in Los Angeles. ¹⁹

Wayne Jordan

Co-founder, secretary treasurer, and board member Wayne Jordan is the founder and president of Jordan Real Estate Investments, a real estate company based in Oakland with projects throughout the United States. Jordan has hosted fundraisers for Congresswomen Barbara Lee (D-CA), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and President Barack Obama (D). Jordan sits on the boards of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Color of Change, Rock the Vote, the ACLU Investment Committee, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. ²⁰ Jordan is a member of Donors of Color ²¹ and has worked with Democracy Alliance. ²²

Delaney and Jordan have worked together as fundraisers, including for Barack Obama (D) in 2008 and 2012, and for the American Civil Liberties Union, for which they raised $4 million in 2008. ²³

Lateefah Simon

President and board member Lateefah Simon is a long-time left-wing racial justice activist. She is the president of the Meadow Fund, a donor-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation ²⁴ with little online presence led by Patty Quillin, the wife of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. In 2020, she was appointed a senior advisor on police reform by California Governor Gavin Newsom (D). In 2016, she became president of the Akonadi Foundation. ²⁵ That year, she also spoke at an event on the lack of diversity in the bike advocacy movement. ²⁶

Also in 2016, Simon became president and member of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board of Directors. She attempted but failed to defund the BART police and accused another board member of racist dog whistling for defending the police. ²⁷ In 2022, Simon got into a dispute with BART after she was forced off the board because she moved to a new home outside the boundaries of her district despite allegedly getting a guarantee that she could keep her seat. After an “outpouring of support,” BART let Simon keep her seat if she moved back to the district, which she did at personal expense by breaking her new lease. ^{28 29}

Simon previously worked as a program director at the Rosenberg Foundation and as executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Prior, she ran an anti-recidivism program under then-district attorney Kamala Harris (D) who mentored her and inspired Simon to attend college. ³⁰ Simon sits on the boards of the Rosenberg Foundation and Tipping Point Foundation and the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch. ³¹

Partner Groups

Akonadi Foundation is partnered with the city of Oakland and the East Bay Community Foundation on Belonging in Oakland: A Just City Cultural Fund, a fund which gives grants to non-white Oakland residents who challenge systemic racism and promote community development. ³²

Akonadi Foundation is partnered with the California Black Freedom Fund to support its spending of $100 million over five years to develop black organizations that oppose systemic racism. ³³

Akonadi Foundation is partnered with Tao Rising, TJ Universe, and Change Consulting to support non-white and LGBT artists during the COVID-19 pandemic. ³⁴

Funding

Nearly all of the Akonadi Foundation’s funding comes from co-founders Quinn Delaney and Wayne Jordan. In 2019, all contributions came from Delaney and Jordan, amounting to over $4 million. Nearly all the rest of the foundation’s $7 million in revenue that year came from its endowment and the sale of assets. ^{35 36}

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