GoFundMosques

Online spending, contactless payments and digitised banking have grown rapidly; and although digitisation has helped many organisations, it has hit British mosques particularly hard as they’re typically led by volunteers from an older generation who rely on cash donations for their running costs.

It’s estimated that mosque donation collection is 60% less than pre-pandemic. This has made it really difficult for mosques across the country to operate, and often meant having to temporarily close with imams looking for second jobs to keep them going. For example, we heard of stories of some even having to take on Deliveroo delivery jobs to make ends meet!

Ramadan is the Superbowl of charity giving for Muslims across the world. And historically, Mosques collect around 80% of their yearly donations in this period as 1 in 2 British Muslims say they support their local mosque during Ramadan. But with changes in donation and payment culture, that figure had taken a hit. So GoFundMe stepped in to help Mosques get back on their feet, helping them digitise by setting up their very own online fundraising page to quickly become online-donation ready.

We enrolled 20 Mosques across UK and Ireland, supplying them with promotional banners which included a QR code, so attendees can donate using their card, ApplePay or Paypal. On these materials, we wanted to provide a compelling message that's easily understandable to all levels of English.

What were the results? Mosque GoFundMe pages provided a modern & mobile-ready method for mosque attendees to donate, which resulted in year-on-year donations growing by 115%. This not only meant Mosques could keep their lights on for the foreseeable future, but it also meant that they could fulfil much-needed community projects that have been paused, such as providing an on-site women-friendly gym and community events.

The biggest outcome was that GoFundMe became a staple within the community. This led to an all-time high of personal GoFundMe
pages being set up by Muslims as they wanted to leave a positive impact during the festive month.