There’s a kind of origin story that gets told about every organization once it’s well established — the smooth narrative, the inevitable founding. But the real story is almost always messier, more accidental, and more human. AMCF’s is no exception. And much of it runs through Safaa Ibrahim, one of AMCF’s co-founders and longtime board leader.
On an early episode of the Muslim Philanthropy Podcast, AMCF Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer Muhi Khwaja sat down with Safaa to talk about how she came to the work, why she said yes to co-founding a Muslim community foundation, and what philanthropy actually means to her.
Stumbling into nonprofit work
Safaa didn’t plan a career in nonprofit work. She started in the private sector, doing project management for web-based data management solutions — back when “the web” was still wild and pioneering. When she moved from Sacramento to San Jose ahead of her wedding, she took a year off, and in that pause, she volunteered at the Muslim Community Association (MCA) masjid.
That year changed her trajectory. “How amazing is it to be able to have your work be something that has purpose — something that gives back to others, not just a paycheck?” she said.
She found her real foothold at CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) in the years after 9/11 — a moment, she said, when Muslim women needed to engage and advocate for themselves rather than wait for others to speak for them. It was an empowering, defining time. Over twelve years at CAIR, she moved from volunteer to local board member, to California board member, to executive director of her local chapter for three years, to officer roles on both the local and state chapters. She held nearly every position in the organization.
How AMCF actually came together
After CAIR, Safaa took a step back, supported some fundraising work for a local high school project, and worked with another foundation for a while. AMCF reached her sideways — through her husband.
One of AMCF’s co-founders, Ayman, was a close friend of her husband’s. He’d been working through an MVP (minimum viable product) design-thinking exercise with Muhi: what would a different way for the Muslim community to fundraise actually look like? Ayman reached out, the three of them ended up in a room, and the conversation moved fast.
Each came to the idea from a different angle. Muhi from development and the work of helping the community give more strategically. Safaa from the side of the nonprofits she’d led, exhausted by the perpetual fundraising treadmill — the banquet after banquet, the $1-at-a-time grind that made it nearly impossible to focus on actual mission work. Ayman from yet another perspective. Their views meshed almost immediately, and AMCF took shape faster than any of them expected.
“I think we had a lot of grace on us,” Safaa said. “Things just kind of took off really fast. We met a gap in our community.”
Why a community foundation was the answer
The Muslim nonprofit ecosystem in the U.S. has been built, as Safaa put it, on the blessings of each individual Muslim giving $1 at a time. That generosity is the backbone of the community. But for nonprofit leaders, it has also meant spending more than 50% of their time on fundraising rather than on mission — and watching peer organizations outside the community access foundations, grants, and organized giving channels that Muslim nonprofits often couldn’t access.
“There were a few foundations that would reach out to the American Muslim community and try to take our hands,” she said, “but it wasn’t mainstream. Only a handful of organizations were savvy enough to understand how to broach that space.”
AMCF was conceived as the bridge. A community foundation built for the Muslim community, capable of doing the institutional work — donor-advised funds, endowments, giving circles, grantmaking — that lets donors give smarter, and nonprofits operate sustainably.
For Safaa personally, AMCF also solved a problem she’d faced as a donor: the end-of-year scramble to remember every place she’d given to, the worry over whether receipts from grassroots organizations would actually hold up, the headache of what should be a joyful act. AMCF streamlined all of it.
What philanthropy means to her
When asked what philanthropy means, Safaa’s answer was direct and characteristic: “Reaching as many causes as possible that matter to me, in a way that is sustainable. Philanthropy is long-term sustainability for the causes that are impacting communities.”
She refuses to pick one issue to solve. “I’m a dreamer. I actually think we have the power and the compassion to change more than one thing.” If she had to name a leverage point, though, it would be injustice — because lifting the cover of injustice from a community, she said, has a domino effect on poverty, healthcare, and education. That’s why she gravitates toward organizations that do civic engagement and minority advocacy.
Her favorite verse from the Quran is from Surah Ar-Rahman — the repeated ayah on the reward of goodness being nothing other than goodness itself. Doing good only brings more good. It is, in her words, the simplest possible articulation of what she tries to live.
A founder’s quiet thanks
Asked what she wanted listeners to take away, Safaa pivoted — as founders often do — to gratitude for the team. She named board members and advisors, gave credit where it was due, and made it clear that AMCF has never been a one- or two-person story. “It takes a village.”
And in a moment of pure Safaa, she also outed herself (and Muhi) as members of what she called the “secret society of Muslim dog owners” — a small joke that, like most jokes from this episode, lands because it’s true.
Listen to the episode
You can find the full conversation with Safaa Ibrahim on the Muslim Philanthropy Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about supporting AMCF through a donor-advised fund or joining a giving circle, visit amuslimcf.org.
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