New donation platform to help communities directly pay down mosque debt

A new platform hopes to help Canada’s Muslim communities directly pay down any outstanding debt held by their local mosques and Islamic schools. 

Own Your Masjid is a project of Process Plus Marketing, a boutique marketing firm based in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). 

Mosques and Islamic schools will be verified using CRA registration information, after which donors can directly pay into the institutions’ accounts to help pay down their debt. 

Own Your Masjid itself does not receive or hold any of the funds. 

Fundraising is a priority for institutions during Ramadan, which is when attendees are most likely to hear about debt that a mosque or Islamic school may have accrued from land purchases, construction and expansion, said Omar Alsayyed, managing partner of strategy, creative and communications at Process Plus Marketing. 

While not all of the debt is interest-bearing, it is also more expensive for Muslim communities to buy land in Canada than in the U.S., Alsayyed said, adding that Canadian-Muslim communities are likely to be concentrated in more expensive parts of the country. 

The challenge Alsayyed and his team spotted was that donors were not always given the transparency that their funds were paying down an institution’s debt. 

In a bid to resolve this informational discrepancy, Own Your Masjid will only accept applications from mosques and Islamic schools that submit their CRA status and registration details, loan documentation, and financial details for review. 

Once verified and onboarded, an institution would also publicly display its loan balance so that donors can track progress towards paying down outstanding debt. 

“Can we get an organization, or a few organizations, to commit to being that transparent? To publicly list their debt? […] If so, then the flow begins,” Alsayyed said. 

Initial response to the platform, which does not yet have any institutions listed, has been positive, he said, with people telling him the sector needs more transparency around debt levels, creditors, and loan terms. 

“The idea of being transparent comes from the charity space in general,” he said. “Can you tell me how you’re using the money? Can you tell me how much cash you have in the bank? Can you tell me how much you’re using on marketing and fundraising? Can you tell me how much you’re using on salaries?”

Alsayyed is currently seeking 10 initial organizations to pilot the platform with, and has already had interest from three mosques and Islamic schools in the GTA. 

Success would depend on the extent to which the platform can reduce mosque debt, as well as inbound interest from other institutions around Canada. 

“We need to focus on community trust,” he said. “You could spend all the time in the world making the platform amazing, but if there isn’t buy-in, and if there isn’t trust behind it, then it’s not going to mean anything.”

In addition, Alsayyed would look to see if more donors are setting up repeat transactions through the platform, recognizing that a big challenge in the charitable sector is moving from one-off donations to getting “more people to commit to building institutions on a regular basis,” he said.