[r9tbayfC]

Over the last few weeks I have been giving a lot of thought to how there are so many initiatives that take place over the world [but especially looking at the west] by brothers and sisters in deen activities.

Would it not be wonderful to create a platform that could synchronise or consolidate all that effort.

I understand the web and believe as one of is pros can be an efficient in providing that platform, but how.

One of the concepts is similar to justgiving.com for charities.
One of the concepts is similar to kickstarter.com for funding projects.

There are those services like rentacoder, elance, etc for recruits coders, developers, writers, accountants, etc, to do work for cheap and competitive rates from around the world

Please check out these sites especially kickstarter which is an amazing concept.

Now if those 3 were consolidated then people could either a) pledge money to activities or projects people want to run [no need to actually be charity registered] it could be an event in a town hall that needs £500 to pay for and get 3/4 scholars in [using kickstarter concept] b) Projects to raise money for charities [justgiving.com concept] c) Freelance outsourcing for cut prices [rentacoder, elance, etc].

How does that sound?

It is just me brainstorming, so much of our money could go to a) proactive activities that will encourage more people to get out there and run events, publications, newsletter if they can get the backing for it. b) So much money can be saved by charities and organisations on shoe string budgets by outsourcing their work.

Let me know your thoughts, I have not sussed it out.

[Heacechig]

Sounds like an interesting idea if you could implement it properly. I think most people's concern will be that they don't want to donate money to a cause that just falls through where there is nothing to show for the money or where there is no transparency/accountability for how the money is spent.

The only projects that would take off and get attention would be the ones that are already started or are already well known projects that just want to ask for more donations.

[exeftWabreava]

The first question that springs to mind is about funding the establishment, maintaining and advertising of the platform itself. You would also need some staff to verify that projects are real and that budgets are realistic.

This would definitely be a very interesting and worthwhile idea, and I can think of lots of fun stuff that could be done with it, like a general pool of money that goes to the highest voted project as soon as that project's full budget can be accounted for, a smaller, set amount that goes to a randomly selected project from a pool of small budget projects, etc.

If you think about it, the charitable giving of the Muslims is WAAY below where it should be. I mean what percentage of people do you think give 1/3 of their income to charity? Forget 1/3 even 1/10?

[VogsHoock]

i try to only fund charities that are also engaged in dawah. eg like funding orphans to live at an islamic school. that way you are not only helping the poor, you are doing dawah too.

we need to coordinate the efforts in this way.

[r9tbayfC]

kickstarters does not actually moderate any of the projects. They have one suggestion that if you are creating something then you could reward the person who pledges money ie. a copy of book you are writing, tickets for an event.

Moulana Shafi and another 5 people did a bungee jump and they raised £15,000 just amongst them. I have many examples of people doing this and raising large amounts.

Kickstarters advises people to just be smart about who they pledge to, the budgets do not have any limitations at all, you simply do a listing [based on the guidelines] and ask for the pledges; if people like your concept then they will pledge. It is as simple as that. There is a project on there that requested $10,000 and got $100,000+ pledges so far.

I think one way around it would be to have 'approved' and 'unapproved' for each posts. Approved is whereby the money is actually deposited with a charity that the originator of the project has liased with to undergo the proposed task, this way the trust is increased for people to pledge. Unapproved is the opposite, a person/group posts the proposal and see's if they can get the pledges from either people they know or do not know via the platform. The risk would be with those who pledge to give money to the cause.

Also to be honest we do it all the time. You have islamic charities asking for money all the time via tv channels, how much do we really know about them? but some raised £100,000+ to send money to a foreign country.

The initial project will cost money to promote and advertise, to get the it publicised out there. But the potential could be so much to see small pockets of dawah projects, books written, events, etc taking place because the funding is available.

Am I just being naive since the responses above seem to be directed to the 'trust' element when it comes to money. Somewhat cynical [rightly so?]

On the flip side I have a gut instinct that I can do this for done for community based projects in the UK and potential get the funding for it. So think of the same concept but for small community projects looking for money, a lot of them have constitutions but may not be registered charities. We have done this many times over and got funding but it has to be held by a registered charity which we did not have a problem with. In one pot we got £5000 to deliver training, a 3rd party held the money and released it each time a payment was made. Make dua this goes well for me.

[#[SoftAzerZx]]

wa rahmatullah,

I like this concept and I'm sure there needs some reforms for charity to flourish really within the muslim community. We desperately need to gather the talents we've got but it's easier said than done.
May Allah make it easy.

[Immusaatmonna]

Since it might be a bit chaotic if one starts big, why not start small. What i meant is try concentrating on only a certain types of projects in the beginning. Like Orphanage and sponsering orphan, building mosques etc. Make the list a bit small initially. Once you get the hang of it, add on more 'types' of sponsership.