A donation appeal tells you what a charity wants to achieve. A fundraising disclosure can tell you something else: who was paid to help raise the money, how much was paid and how much was reported as raised for that activity.
For Muslim donors, those are reasonable questions to ask before giving. We found named professional-fundraiser disclosures for the five charities below, ranging from platform and advisory services to an explicitly described influencer campaign. The amounts matter, but so does understanding what kind of arrangement each row describes.
The countdown is ordered by the total of named payments in each charity's latest stored disclosure year. It is not a ranking of all fundraising costs. It compares different years, and a disclosed payment does not by itself establish deception, personal enrichment or misuse of Zakat.
A large payment is not the same as a low halal score
| Charity | Transparency score (%) | Program score (%) | Overhead score (%) | Completion score (%) | Halal score /10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naseeha Mental Health | 82% | 72% | 28% | 82% | 7.4 |
| Penny Appeal USA | 72% | 78% | 22% | 76% | 7.3 |
| Humanity First International | 82% | 74% | 26% | 83% | 7.5 |
| Muslim Advocates | 85% | 41% | 59% | 75% | 5.8 |
| Human Appeal USA | 85% | 94% | 6% | 78% | 8.2 |
Program, overhead, transparency and completion values are stored 0 to 100 assessment scores shown as percentages. They are not audited financial ratios, guarantees about how donations are spent or observed project-completion rates. All five records have Pass for funding, connection and legal checks within the recorded screening scope. A paid fundraiser is not automatically a failed halal-funding check.
Human Appeal USA has both the largest named-payment total and the highest halal score here, 8.2/10. Muslim Advocates has a smaller payment total but a 5.8/10 halal score and 59% overhead score. The point is not to dismiss either figure: it is that fee disclosures, broad expense assessments and compliance checks answer different questions. None tells us, on its own, whether a fee was financed from Zakat.
5. Naseeha Mental Health: $39,099 in named payments, FY2024
One named payment is recorded:
- Shamaazi Ltd, trading as MyTenNights: $39,099 paid; $290,253 reported as raised.
The listed activity is an online donations platform. The payment is approximately 13.5% of the amount reported as raised for that activity: about $13.47 paid for every $100 raised. That gives a donor a clearer sense of scale than the fee alone. It is a row-level comparison, not the charity's overall fundraising ratio or proof that the same percentage was deducted from each individual gift.
This entry also shows why “paid fundraiser” should not automatically mean “paid influencer.” The named recipient here is a platform business. A donor can reasonably want the cost disclosed while recognizing that platform services and personal promotional appearances are different arrangements.
Stored entity and filing locator, EIN 83-4406712
4. Penny Appeal USA: $42,150 in named payments, FY2024
The two largest stored rows are:
- Ahmed Billoo: $22,150 paid; $116,000 reported as raised.
- Arsalan Iftikhar: $15,000 paid; $75,010 reported as raised.
Both are described as fundraising advisory services. Their fees are approximately 19.1% and 20.0% of the amounts reported as raised for their respective activities. The charity total includes another stored payment not itemized here.
The practical point is that a lower dollar fee need not mean a lower cost relative to the amount raised: Iftikhar's $15,000 is smaller than Billoo's $22,150, but slightly larger as a share of the amount raised for that activity. Neither percentage tells us the contract terms, whether their work overlapped, or how much would have been raised without their involvement.
Stored entity and filing locator, EIN 47-5165837
3. Humanity First International: $45,655 in named payments, FY2022
The disclosure records:
- Qasim Rashid: $45,655 paid; $304,170 reported as raised.
The activity is described as an Influencer Campaign. The payment is approximately 15.0% of the amount reported as raised for that activity.
Unlike the advisory and platform entries, this record explicitly uses the influencer label. The fee is material enough to matter to a donor: it is roughly $15 paid for every $100 reported as raised. That describes a fundraising cost, not whether the campaign was good value. Assessing value would also require evidence about additional donations the campaign generated and the terms agreed.
This record is from 2022, not the 2024 period used by the other four entries. It should not be presented as a current-year payment.
Stored entity and filing locator, EIN 20-0464012
2. Muslim Advocates: $120,000 in named payments, FY2024
The disclosure records:
- Village Non Profit Solutions LLC: $120,000 paid; no amount raised recorded in that row.
The activity is fundraising advisor/strategist. The absence of an amount raised in this row does not prove that the engagement produced no benefit. It does mean there is no meaningful fee-to-amount-raised percentage to calculate from that row.
An advisory engagement may be intended to support a broader fundraising operation rather than one directly attributed appeal, but this record does not establish the particular arrangement. We can say that $120,000 is recorded as paid; the missing raised amount for this row does not show that the charity paid for “nothing.” That distinction is central to reading the disclosure fairly.
Stored entity and filing locator, EIN 30-0298794
1. Human Appeal USA: $2,201,153 in named payments, FY2024
The two largest stored rows are:
- Khaled Beydoun: $2,040,887 paid; $7,120,440 reported as raised. Listed activity: online LaunchGood campaigns.
- Razwana Fazil: $105,116 paid; no amount raised recorded for this activity. Listed activity: a LaunchGood campaign.
The Beydoun row's payment is approximately 28.7% of the amount reported as raised for that activity. No fee-to-amount-raised percentage can be calculated for the Fazil row. The total also includes Elridi Group and Hassan Abunar.
The largest row dominates the result: Beydoun's recorded $2,040,887 is approximately 92.7% of the charity's named-payment total. That is why Human Appeal USA leads this countdown by such a large margin. The same row works out to about $28.66 paid for every $100 reported as raised for those campaigns, which is a different and more informative statement than quoting the payment without its denominator.
The disclosure does not establish who ultimately retained the money or which restricted funds financed the payments. In particular, a named payment associated with online campaigns is not automatically proof of a personal take-home amount.
Stored entity and filing locator, EIN 87-2410117
What Muslim donors can reasonably ask
Was the fundraiser paid a fixed fee, a percentage or another arrangement? Was that arrangement explained in the appeal? Which funds paid the costs? What policy applies when the donor selects Zakat?
The stored Schedule G records do not identify whether these payments came from Zakat, unrestricted donations or another funding source. That question needs a fund-specific answer rather than an assumption.
Make fundraising part of your charity research
The conclusion is not that all paid fundraising is wrong. It is that the cost and arrangement deserve to be understandable to donors before they give. This shortlist contains platform services, advisory work, an explicitly labeled influencer campaign and online campaign payments. Treating them all as the same activity would hide rather than explain the disclosure.
Zakat+ brings named payments together with the amounts reported as raised, reporting periods and broader financial records. Pro's detailed breakdowns make those disclosures part of the donation decision, rather than a figure that is easy to miss behind an appeal's headline.
For Zakat donors, one question remains separate: which fund actually paid the cost? None of these rows establishes that answer. Clear disclosure of fundraising payments is a reason to ask for that explanation, not a basis for assuming restricted donations were misused.
