The world of Zakat is really infuriating/frustrating. There is almost NO accountability/transparency demonstrated by orgs which collect and distribute zakat—they don’t seem to feel any obligation to show what they do with what they collect. Correspondingly, nearly every Muslim I’ve spoken to about zakat/effective zakat has expressed that their number 1 gripe with zakat is the strong suspicion that it’s being pocketed or corruptly used by these collection orgs.
Given this, it seems like there’s a really big niche in the market to be exploited by an EA-aligned zakat org. My feeling at the moment is that the org should focus on, and emphasise, its ability to be highly accountable and transparent about how it stores and distributes the zakat it collects.
The trick here is finding ways to distribute zakat to eligible recipients in cost-effective ways. Currently, possibly only two of the several dozen ‘most effective’ charities we endorse as a community would be likely zakat-compliant (New Incentives, and Give Directly), and even then, only one or two of GiveDirectly’s programs would qualify.
This is pretty disappointing, because it means that the EA community would probably have to spend quite a lot of money either identifying new highly effective charities which are zakat-compliant, or start new highly-effective zakat complaint orgs from scratch.
I’m not sure how I feel about this as a pathway, given the requirement that zakat donations only go to other people within the religion. On the one hand, it sounds like any charity that is constrained in this way in terms of recipients but had non-Muslim employees/contractors, would have to be subsidised by non-zakat donations (based on the GiveDirectly post linked in another comment). It also means endorsing a rather narrow moral circle, whereas potentially it might be more impactful to expend resources trying expand that circle than to optimise within it.
Otoh, it does cover a whole quarter of humanity, and so potentially a lot of low hanging fruit can be gained without correspondingly slowing moral circle expansion.
I don’t think helping people who feel an obligation to give zakat do so in the most effective way possible would constitute “endorsing” the awarding of strong preference to members of one’s religion as recipients of charity. It merely recognizes that the donor has already made this precommitment, and we want their donation to be as effective as possible given that precommitment.
Given that annual zakat donations are $550 - $600 billion a year, even steering 1% of that to funding opportunities 0.1x as cost-effective as the 1,000x bar would lead to impact comparable to Open Philanthropy’s entire GHD funding, so starting a new zakat-compliant effective giving org (e.g. inspired by these orgs) seems straightforwardly good to do?
Yeah on the face of it, this simple case is extremely appealing. As you do more work looking at the specifics, it becomes more evident that there are a number of pretty significant hurdles
Yarrow, there is a MASSIVE amount of writing on this topic—there is quite a lot of agreement but also (like many things in Islam) large points of disagreement.
I think for the purposes of EA/effective giving, in the simplest form:
Zakat is a wealth-tax levied against Muslims above a certain wealth level and given to a small prescribed group of eligible recipients. Strictly, zakat has to be in the form of the transfer of ownership of cash or commodities.
In the theology there are 8 permissible groups, only one of which I think we’d be able to target for EA purposes—the (Muslim) poor and needy. So any program we’d try and get to be zakat-certified would be checked that the recipients are muslim and are poor and a couple of other things. They’d also want to make sure that the funds are disbursed within one lunar year of collection.
Zakat has to be held in a non-interest-barring account, and shouldn’t be intermingled with non-Zakat funds. Zakat also can’t be used to cover transaction or operational fees.
Let me know if you have any other more specific points of enquiry?
EZ#1
The world of Zakat is really infuriating/frustrating. There is almost NO accountability/transparency demonstrated by orgs which collect and distribute zakat—they don’t seem to feel any obligation to show what they do with what they collect. Correspondingly, nearly every Muslim I’ve spoken to about zakat/effective zakat has expressed that their number 1 gripe with zakat is the strong suspicion that it’s being pocketed or corruptly used by these collection orgs.
Given this, it seems like there’s a really big niche in the market to be exploited by an EA-aligned zakat org. My feeling at the moment is that the org should focus on, and emphasise, its ability to be highly accountable and transparent about how it stores and distributes the zakat it collects.
The trick here is finding ways to distribute zakat to eligible recipients in cost-effective ways. Currently, possibly only two of the several dozen ‘most effective’ charities we endorse as a community would be likely zakat-compliant (New Incentives, and Give Directly), and even then, only one or two of GiveDirectly’s programs would qualify.
This is pretty disappointing, because it means that the EA community would probably have to spend quite a lot of money either identifying new highly effective charities which are zakat-compliant, or start new highly-effective zakat complaint orgs from scratch.
Not sure if you know, but GiveDirectly did have a zakat fund last year https://fundraisers.givedirectly.org/campaigns/yemenzakat
Yep, thanks !
I’m not sure how I feel about this as a pathway, given the requirement that zakat donations only go to other people within the religion. On the one hand, it sounds like any charity that is constrained in this way in terms of recipients but had non-Muslim employees/contractors, would have to be subsidised by non-zakat donations (based on the GiveDirectly post linked in another comment). It also means endorsing a rather narrow moral circle, whereas potentially it might be more impactful to expend resources trying expand that circle than to optimise within it.
Otoh, it does cover a whole quarter of humanity, and so potentially a lot of low hanging fruit can be gained without correspondingly slowing moral circle expansion.
I don’t think helping people who feel an obligation to give zakat do so in the most effective way possible would constitute “endorsing” the awarding of strong preference to members of one’s religion as recipients of charity. It merely recognizes that the donor has already made this precommitment, and we want their donation to be as effective as possible given that precommitment.
Given that annual zakat donations are $550 - $600 billion a year, even steering 1% of that to funding opportunities 0.1x as cost-effective as the 1,000x bar would lead to impact comparable to Open Philanthropy’s entire GHD funding, so starting a new zakat-compliant effective giving org (e.g. inspired by these orgs) seems straightforwardly good to do?
Yeah on the face of it, this simple case is extremely appealing. As you do more work looking at the specifics, it becomes more evident that there are a number of pretty significant hurdles
What are the criteria for zakat compliance?
Some previous discussion here.
Yarrow, there is a MASSIVE amount of writing on this topic—there is quite a lot of agreement but also (like many things in Islam) large points of disagreement.
I think for the purposes of EA/effective giving, in the simplest form:
Zakat is a wealth-tax levied against Muslims above a certain wealth level and given to a small prescribed group of eligible recipients. Strictly, zakat has to be in the form of the transfer of ownership of cash or commodities.
In the theology there are 8 permissible groups, only one of which I think we’d be able to target for EA purposes—the (Muslim) poor and needy. So any program we’d try and get to be zakat-certified would be checked that the recipients are muslim and are poor and a couple of other things. They’d also want to make sure that the funds are disbursed within one lunar year of collection.
Zakat has to be held in a non-interest-barring account, and shouldn’t be intermingled with non-Zakat funds. Zakat also can’t be used to cover transaction or operational fees.
Let me know if you have any other more specific points of enquiry?
I’d love to know more about what the people you’ve spoken to have said—e.g. what kinds of accountability or transparency are they looking for?