Automated Donations: The New Ramadan Fundraising Scheme
It’s Ramadan. It’s the month of fasting and the Quran. For Islamic organizations, it’s also the month of fundraising. Muslims are the most generous during Ramadan and organizations count on this month to receive most of their donations. Consequently, Ramadan becomes a time when organizations compete for your donations.
We now see Islamic organizations regularly encouraging Muslims to automate their Ramadan donations. Some use hadith emphasizing the importance of consistent actions, while others sell automation as a way of catching Laylat al Qadr.
Sadaqa benefits both the giver and the recipient. While the recipient’s benefit is obvious, the giver gains spiritual rank and forgiveness of sins. At best, schemes like automated donations prioritize the recipients’ benefit, while neglecting the spiritual growth intended for the donor. It’s ultimately your responsibility to prioritize the quality of your giving and its potential to spiritually transform you.
In many verses of the Quran, Allah mentions the state of the heart of the one giving sadaqa. This includes giving while hearts are full of fear of Allah, giving wealth to purify one’s soul, and giving despite one’s love for wealth. The one who gives despite loving wealth, for example, reinforces and strengthens his love for Allah over his love for money each time he gives and undergoes that struggle. When this is repeated, it gradually becomes a part of the giver’s disposition and transforms him.
Automated donations, however, shift sadaqa from repeated conscious acts to a single intention at the initial giving, after which subsequent acts continue mechanically. With automation, the donor has fewer confrontations with this attachment and fewer opportunities for repeated self-struggle through which sadaqa refines and transforms his heart.
Automation campaigns aim to secure your donations. They are not here to guide you to what is best for you as a donor. Organizations will prioritize their sustenance, salaries, and growth over your spiritual growth. The same organizations may very well be honest and provide services that do contribute to your spiritual growth. So we must distinguish between the overall work of organizations and the particular tactics that prioritize themselves, or even a good cause, at the expense of your spiritual growth as a donor.
Automated donations have been uncritically accepted and encouraged without any concern for the effect that they have on the practice of sadaqa itself. For example, what is the difference between a one-time donation versus setting up an automated plan in one sitting? Is the daily intention to just not cancel the daily donations? If automation is set up throughout the year, does the monthly payment end up feeling like a bill and is it then received with the same annoyance as a bill? What effect does this have on sadaqa as an act of worship—an expression of slave-hood to Allah?
Furthermore, the advertised benefits of ‘daily donations’ come with a fine print you may not have considered. There are important shari’ concerns, such as what happens when a person dies, even minutes before their scheduled automated donation? If the donation is made after their death and wasn’t part of the 1/3 bequeathed in their will, it will impact the inheritance rights of their heirs. Furthermore, automation is not analogous to sadaqa jariyah. A sadaqa jariyah is an act someone does in their own life, and the reward then continues due to the benefit of the act continuing. The ‘automatic’ part in sadaqa jariyah is the ongoing reward, not the act of sadaqa itself. For example, if someone pays to build a well, the act of sadaqa is in the payment made while the donor is alive. The sadaqa jariyah is from the well’s lasting presence and benefit after it is completed, even after the donor’s own life. The same goes for a waqf. This is in no way analogous to automated donations, which are multiple acts of giving, not instances of benefiting from what you have already given.
Automation in worship mirrors our wider dependence on digital convenience. Sometimes these organizations act on the advice of marketing consultants and even the learned religious leadership is unable to identify problems with the concocted marketing schemes. Other times, the religious leadership is not involved in the marketing department at all. Generally, norms and trends are not scrutinized. If you ask a shaykh whose organization solicits automated donations, “Is it better to donate daily or to automate my donations?” he will surely tell you it is better for you to donate daily and not to automate any donations.
When you ask this question, you are asking what is the best way to give sadaqa, and you will get an honest answer. When you are being solicited to donate, however, you are just a means to an organizational end. The goal is just to secure your donation. The cause is given primacy over the quality of your sadaqa. For this reason, it is easy to reconcile between a shaykh telling you it is best for you to donate daily, personally, or daily online rather than automating donations, while simultaneously soliciting automated donations. Therefore, it is up to you to want what is best for yourself.
Of course presence is not a condition for giving sadaqa and automated donations are halal and valid. There is a level of awareness even in automated donations. However, you owe it to yourself to expect more out of the way you practice sadaqa. Donating online often leads to us to neglect giving giving sadaqa to our neighbors and supporting our local community, despite the fact that our obligations to family and our neighborhood are generally more important. Understanding this should move us to actually get involved in the community to find out what is needed by whom. Sadaqa between community members increases the social solidarity in real life, as opposed to online donations where we delegate machines to complete our ibada.
Advertising often uses non-concrete language, and marketing schemes are designed to relieve anxiety. Emphasizing the importance of consistent acts of worship while offering a simple solution to someone overwhelmed by their Ramadan schedule becomes the perfect organizational ploy. This marketing ends up recasting sadaqa as a task to check off a list, rather than an integral act of worship. We should also expect ‘automation’ to soon be replaced by clever euphemisms in the style of Edward Bernays, like ‘scheduled gifts.’ The assumed benefit of automation is convenience. The fact is, donating online is already easy. If you want to give online daily, you can do so by setting a daily reminder, going online and making the daily donation.
The Prophetﷺ taught us that the most beloved of actions to Allah are the most consistent, even if small. A good regular sadaqa practice can be to give small amounts every jummah, or a small amount daily. In a hadith, one of the seven people shaded on the Day of Judgement is a person who would give charity and hide it to the extent that his left hand did not know what his right hand gave. This hadith emphasizes giving in private, which is further from ostentation and thus helps one build sincerity. These practices will help cultivate the virtuous traits of sincerity and of karam (generosity), turning you into a person who gives with ease.
Related article: The Commodification of Worship: How Automation Dilutes the Meaning of Seeking Laylat al-Qadr
To contact Danish Qasim directly, email him at Danish@inshaykhsclothing.com.