Muslim Charities and Donors Make Efforts to Improve Giving

Muslim charities and philanthropists meeting here last month took steps to improve their charitable efforts, saying that, while Muslims give billions of dollars every year to humanitarian causes, their giving is poorly coordinated and inefficient.

The second World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists brought together 200 or so representatives of Muslim charities and some major Muslim and non-Muslim philanthropic organizations with the goal of finding ways to give more effectively.

There is a long tradition of giving in Islam. One of the five obligations for Muslims is known as zakat, a call to donate 2.5 percent of assets to the needy every year. Zakat is rarely given in a coordinated way to charity, but usually supports needy family members and individuals or local mosques.

Sheikha Aisha bint Faleh Bin Nasser Al-Thani, a member of the ruling family of Qatar, warned conference participants that they must not lose sight of the theological motivation for giving, but at the same time she urged a major shift in the way Muslim philanthropists award donations.

She told philanthropists that they must begin to think of nonprofit organizations as essential social institutions that need to be supported in a way that will allow them to sustain their efforts over the long term, rather than scraping by without knowing where their next contribution was coming from or when they would see it.

She also called on charities to begin working more closely with philanthropists to coordinate their goals.

“Information has to begin flowing both ways,” said Ms. Aisha, who is a board member of Reach Out to Asia, a nonprofit organization that gives money to assist the spread of primary education in Asia. “Philanthropists aren’t just checkbooks.”

What’s more, with so much duplication among the goals of Muslim philanthropic organizations, she encouraged donors to collaborate more.

The world financial crisis is forcing all charities and philanthropic organizations — Muslim or not — to rethink the way they operate, noted Jenny Harrow, a professor of voluntary sector management at the City University of London’s Cass Business School.

She outlined some key lessons learned by organizations in Britain by way of example.

“Whatever form of recession we are facing, the tests for philanthropy are significant,” Ms. Harrow said.

The increased financial pressure means that philanthropists should support charities’ primary efforts, rather than expecting them to start new programs.

For some foundations, especially smaller ones, Ms. Harrow said it may be time to consider “sunsetting” or “spending out” their endowments to help hard-hit charities.

“There’s the phrase ‘keeping the money for a rainy day,’” she said. “Well, this is the rainy day.”

Also, she said charities should resist the pressure to merge, as recessions have historically proved to be the worst time for charities to survive a merger. Instead, she said, charities should form partnerships with organizations that have similar goals.

Perhaps the most striking example of where Muslim nonprofit leaders need to rethink charitable efforts is in the Palestinian territories, one conference speaker said.

Nora Lester Murad, executive director of the Dalia Association, in Ramallah, said that more government aid money per capita is delivered to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza than anywhere else in the world. But Palestinian nonprofit groups remain woefully ineffective.

“Let me be clear. We are not against international aid. And we are not against donations,” Ms. Murad said. “But there is a better way to do things.”

The Dalia Association helps Palestinian nonprofit organizations find more effective ways to use the resources that are pouring into the impoverished area.

Ms. Murad said there are so many players on the Palestinian scene with competing agendas and burdensome requirements that aid efforts are practically broken.

Donor-driven agendas, layers upon layers of bureaucracy, and unreasonable and harmful procurement rules hamper the ability of Palestinian nonprofit organizations to deliver badly needed assistance, she said.

What’s more, dependency on foreign governments and other donors has created an atmosphere in which nonprofit organizations destructively compete for money; charities often resent those that receive international attention for their work, she said.

To help ease the dependency on foreign aid, the Dalia Association is creating an endowment, partly supported by philanthropy, that would allow Palestinian charities to control their own money.

“Philanthropists can help us in Palestine to create an alternative to the dependence on aid,” Ms. Murad said. “Because people do not waste their own money. They waste other people’s money.”