HasanaH

Better Giving Studio identified this concept through the 2020 Reimagine Charitable Giving Challenge, an open innovation component of the program which sourced nearly 400 digital giving products and concepts. The concept summary below is inspired by and derived from the Challenge entry submitted to the Challenge.

Why BGS is Excited About This Concept

• The Zakat calculation feature includes goal-setting functionality.
• The HasanaH app is highly donor focused and culturally contextual, unlocking opportunities for community-building and inter-generational giving.
• Causes are curated according to portfolios aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals, allowing for easy searching. Every user can track their donations using a personalized Impact Tracking dashboard.

The Opportunity

Engaging in the practice of philanthropy is a central component in practicing Islam. Zakat, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, is a form of alms-giving that’s considered a religious obligation or tax for those who meet certain wealth requirements. Sadaqah is considered a voluntary offering. Together, these forms of Islamic philanthropy generate up to USD 1 trillion annually in charitable funds, but the beneficial impact is often significantly restrained due to an absence of transparent and accountable delivery mechanisms. 

The Concept

HasanaH empowers Muslim donors, and donors of all faiths, to give with improved transparency and impact. By creating a real-time pool of screened projects, HasanaH offers direct access to a wide variety of development and humanitarian initiatives. The beta HasanaH app allows users to donate with just three clicks to credible projects and organizations from around the world. With the power of informed choice and reliable information, donors can support credible and impactful organizations with proven track records of helping vulnerable communities. 

The app also empowers users to build their own giving portfolio based on their personal interests and cause areas, allowing them to track their philanthropic impact over time. HasanaH currently includes 4,600 fundable projects in 140 countries across humanitarian, development, and environmental causes — all of which have been linked on the platform to their respective SDG’s. Alignment toward the SDG’s enables impact tracking and measurement against a framework commonly used by many other organizations.

HasanaH serves people of all faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds. However, the platform provides a unique service offering to Muslim donors by integrating a component that helps them calculate and track their Zakat contributions in line with their Islamic faith. Campaigns on the platform include collaborative giving functionality – campaigns are time-bound and include a simple feed listing individual contributions and donor names (there’s an option to remain anonymous). Any nonprofit can launch a crowdfunding campaign on the platform and share it with their community of supporters, friends, and family. Once they join on, donors receive regular updates from the nonprofits they’ve supported through the platform. 

In its beta launch HasanaH focused on a set of initial target markets: Indonesia, India, Pakistan, UAE, KSA, Egypt, UK, USA, Malaysia, and Turkey, chosen based on a set of criterion including the size of the Muslim population, chartiable giving rates, ties to crisis countries, and others. Through initial user testing, HasanaH has found that young, affluent Muslim men and women in white collar jobs currently practicing Zakat and/or Saqadah giving are most likely to use and benefit from the app.