Zakat committee reflections, a year in distributions

Our Zakat committee meets the first Tuesday of every month. It is a small group: two scholars, a social worker, a community member with an accounting background, and a rotating volunteer. We are unpaid for the work, by design, so that the line between "the committee that decides" and "the staff that benefits" is as clean as we can make it.

This is a reflection on the year that just closed, the cases that taught us the most, and the things we want to do better.

The shape of the year

We distributed $214,000 in Zakat over twelve months, across 312 applications. The eight categories the Qur'an names in verse 9:60, the poor, the needy, those who collect and distribute, those whose hearts are to be reconciled, those in captivity, the indebted, those in the cause of Allah, and the traveler, all came up, though our neighborhood concentrated the work in three: the poor, the needy, and the indebted.

The largest single category was debt relief, mostly medical and rent. The second was direct assistance to families experiencing a sudden loss of income. The third was refugee support, including rent deposits, ESL tuition, and the cost of a work permit for a family that arrived in the fall.

What we underestimated

We underestimated how many applications would come from families who were already receiving help from another organization. We had to build a process for that, asking for permission to coordinate, and honoring the families' wishes when they said no.

We also underestimated the time it would take to process refugee cases. The paperwork is real, and the timeline is slow. We have committed, from this year on, to a longer initial response window for these cases, with a dedicated reviewer from the refugee support lead on the team page.

A case study

One application came in from a family of four, a mother and three children, who had fled domestic violence two years earlier. The mother had been working as a home health aide, the children were in school, and they were holding on. Then the mother's car died, and her commute to the next town over became impossible, and her hours were cut, and rent was due. The application was for two months of rent, about $3,800, and a used-car repair budget of about $1,200.

The committee met on it for almost an hour. The case did not fit neatly into the eight categories. The family was not "the poor" in the classical sense, and they were not "the needy" in the sense of begging. They were working. They were on the edge. The committee's read was that the case fit the category of those who are in debt, in the broad sense, and that the long-term outcome of not helping was worse than the cost of helping. We approved the application. Six months later, the mother wrote to us to say the car was repaired, the hours were back, and they had a small buffer in savings. The application worked.

The case taught us two things. The first is that the eight categories are not a checklist. They are a starting point, and the work of the committee is to read the case in front of us, not to map it onto a rubric. The second is that the committee's job is to be slow when the case is hard. A ten-minute review of a $5,000 application is not a review. The hour we spent on this case was the work.

What we are changing for next year

We are changing three things. We are publishing, in this year's annual report, a fuller picture of the cases we turned down, and why. We declined a small number of applications that we felt did not fit the categories. We want to be transparent about those calls.

We are shortening the application form itself. It is currently five pages; we are aiming for two. The long form is a barrier to families who are already in distress, and the long form is also a way of asking for information we do not actually need to decide the case.

We are adding a second social worker to the committee, so that the refugee cases have a primary reviewer who is not also reviewing the rent and medical cases. The current reviewer is doing heroic work. We are not asking for more heroism. We are asking for more hands.

What we want to do better

We want to publish, in this year's annual report, a fuller picture of the cases we turned down, and why. We declined a small number of applications that we felt did not fit the categories. We want to be transparent about those calls.

We also want to make the application form itself shorter. It is currently five pages; we are aiming for two. If you have thoughts, the FAQ page has our contact, or write to zakat@mupla.org directly.

A note for new Zakat committees

We get asked, by friends at other foundations, what we have learned about running a Zakat committee. The short version is: pay the committee for their time, even if the pay is symbolic. The longer version is: keep the committee small enough to sit at one table, keep the meetings long enough to read the hard cases, and publish the totals at the end of the year, with the line items, so the donors can see where the money went. Anything less than that, and the work starts to drift toward the categories the committee is comfortable with, and away from the categories the neighborhood actually needs.

For more on how the foundation's programs fit together, including the refugee resettlement work and the food pantry that many Zakat recipients also use, see the programs page.