Centering Relationships to Achieve Fundraising Results
Anwar Khan returns to close Day 1 with the most operational session of the summit — and the most spiritually grounded. 30 years of fundraising, treated not as a tactic list but as a discipline.
If Anwar Khan opened the summit with a keynote on collaboration, he closed Day 1 with its operational sibling: fundraising. Both, he argued, are built the same way — through relationships, over years, with sincerity that compounds. Moderated by AMCF Executive Director Shazeen Mufti, the session is dense enough to watch with a notebook open.
Ramadan Is the Harvest, Not the Planting
Ramadan is not the time you start making relationships. That’s the rest of the year. Ramadan is when you pick the fruit of the tree.— Anwar Khan
Most Muslim organizations spend eleven months not cultivating, then panic-fundraise in thirty days. The fix is upstream: the relationships that produce Ramadan giving are built in the off-months, when nobody is asking for money.
The Group Most Muslim Nonprofits Ignore
Anwar named, repeatedly, the most underutilized base in Muslim fundraising: women and youth. The average American donor is a woman; the average American volunteer is a woman over 65. Yet most Muslim nonprofit cultivation focuses elsewhere. The people you bring on stage signal who you think your donors are — and if your speakers are exclusively men, your donor pipeline will be too.
The 16-Year-Old Who Raised $250,000
Given three 16-year-old volunteers and a $250,000 target, Anwar’s team hit it — through basketball tournaments, food drives, and the girls’ own networks. One personally wrote a $10,000 check. The deeper point: today’s teenagers are tomorrow’s major donors. Are Muslim organizations cultivating them now, or treating them as inheritors of a pipeline that doesn’t exist?
Sincerity Is Part of the Strategy
This is where the session moved from operational to spiritual. Anwar told of asking a mentor why a competing organization raised more, and being told: they have more sincerity than you.
Pray hard, work smart. I didn’t say work hard — you can work hard and not be successful.— Anwar Khan
The 25-Year Lesson
Most people, including funders, assume Muslim organizations only help Muslims. They don’t — and Muslim orgs don’t tell them. The fix is in the first sentence: lead with the fact that you help everyone. As Anwar put it, every major grant they ever won came after kebabs and chai; the ones submitted cold were rejected every time.
Watch the full session
90 minutes, with chapter markers. Free for summit attendees · full library access for everyone else.
Watch the session →The 3rd Annual AMCF Nonprofit Summit is in Detroit on September 3, 2026. Theme: Community Building.