First of all, I love the idea of redirecting Zakat to the most effective charities, and regardless of the size of global Zakat, this seems neglected and a large opportunity. I do however think your estimates are off.
I refer to @Stan Pinsent for his great data, and that is basically my view on it too, but I wanted to add a couple of things to that.
Total yearly global philanthropy seems around 841 billion. 590 of which are remittances, which some don’t even see as philanthropy. More than 90% of philanthropy flows from wealthy countries that are either non-muslim or where a significant part of muslims are secular and/or don’t follow zakat rules.
I would put my confidence interval that Zakat is less than 350 billion USD at 90%. It seems incredibly unlikely that more than 30% of global philanthropy stems from Zakat for the reasons stated by Stan, and looking at global giving.
This is not hard data, but I’ve also run ad campaigns for large NGO’s, and they promote more during Zakat, and I know it was driving less than 10% of yearly donations for these charities (and one of these was a popular charity for muslims).
First of all, I love the idea of redirecting Zakat to the most effective charities, and regardless of the size of global Zakat, this seems neglected and a large opportunity. I do however think your estimates are off.
I refer to @Stan Pinsent for his great data, and that is basically my view on it too, but I wanted to add a couple of things to that.
Total yearly global philanthropy seems around 841 billion. 590 of which are remittances, which some don’t even see as philanthropy. More than 90% of philanthropy flows from wealthy countries that are either non-muslim or where a significant part of muslims are secular and/or don’t follow zakat rules.
I would put my confidence interval that Zakat is less than 350 billion USD at 90%. It seems incredibly unlikely that more than 30% of global philanthropy stems from Zakat for the reasons stated by Stan, and looking at global giving.
This is not hard data, but I’ve also run ad campaigns for large NGO’s, and they promote more during Zakat, and I know it was driving less than 10% of yearly donations for these charities (and one of these was a popular charity for muslims).