The Ihsan Standard — nonprofit track.
Ten standards — the public scoring rubric applied to US Muslim 501(c)(3) nonprofits and masjids. Scholar-reviewed, fully footnoted, citable. Cite us, replicate us, improve us — and use the standard to encourage your own org to meet the bar. Each standard is scored independently. The mosque-specific overlay (community-health framework, iqamah-times transparency, cash- collection oversight) layers on top for masjids. The business equivalent — six dimensions led by zakat & financial discipline — lives under the Businesses tab.
- Version
- v1.0
- Published
- February 14, 2026
- Last reviewed
- May 1, 2026
- Council sign-off
- 11 scholars · April 2026
The standard is the standard the Prophet ﷺ taught.
The name of this framework is not decorative. Iḥsān (إحسان) is the third tier of the religion the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ described when Jibrīl ʿalayhi as-salām came to teach the Companions — after islām (submission) and īmān (faith). The hadith records the answer:
“Iḥsān is to worship Allah as though you see Him, and if you do not see Him, then [know that] He sees you.”
That is the standard we are trying to apply to our own institutions. Not a marketing badge, not a checklist for appearance — a working assumption that Allāh sees the ledger, the kitchen, the worker timesheet, the supplier contract, the discount given to a non-Muslim customer, the decision the board made when no public would notice. A Muslim business or nonprofit run with iḥsān behaves as if it is under that gaze whether or not anyone audits it.
This framework is the institutional translation of that principle. We are not asking Muslim organizations to look good. We are asking them to be the kind of organizations the gaze of iḥsān would be pleased with — so that when the world looks at us, they see role models worth studying. Allah says:
كُنتُمْ خَيْرَ أُمَّةٍ أُخْرِجَتْ لِلنَّاسِ تَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَتَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ وَتُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللَّهِ
“You are the best nation produced [as an example] for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and believe in Allah.”
The verse is operative, not honorific. You are the best nation produced for mankind — the audience is mankind, not Muslims alone. The way that excellence is realized is named in the same verse: you enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong. An audit framework that holds Muslim institutions to that bar — publicly, with citations, with a right of reply — is one concrete way to act on what the verse asks of us.
The standards in this rubric are therefore not modern KPIs dressed in Arabic. They are an attempt to put what iḥsān asks — care for the worker, honest dealing with the customer, transparency with the donor, integrity with the regulator, fidelity with the supplier, mercy with the neighbor — into rows a stranger can score with public data. We will fall short of this many times. We expect to. The point of publishing the rubric is to let anyone — Muslim or not, ally or critic — hold us to it.
The ten standards
- A
Zakat fidelity & transparency
Zakat allocated across the eight Qur'ānic categories with public-facing honesty about actual practice. Vague informational pages that quietly let admin fees and building expenses sit on the zakat ledger don't pass — the public page must reflect what the books actually do.
- B
Religious products integrity
Qurbani, fidya, kaffara, and zakat al-fitr — pricing, timing, and scholar sign-off. Zakat al-fitr cleanly closed before the eid prayer; qurbani timing publicly stamped so donors know when tied actions (hair, nails) can be performed; pricing rooted in actual cost, not anchored fundraising figures.
- C
Financial discipline
No interest-bearing operating accounts. Donation-processing fees driven to a minimum so the maximum dollar reaches the project — not bleeding 3–5% on expensive donate buttons when shariah-compatible alternatives exist. Honest gift-in-kind reporting, reclassified program ratio, transparent reserves.
- D
Investment ethics & sustainable infrastructure
Reserves and endowment invested only in shariah-compliant instruments and screened against community-harm exposure — divested from companies complicit in atrocities or building surveillance tech against Muslims. Sustainable donation pipeline established: waqf or a credible plan toward one, DAF acceptance, stock-receipt capability so the maximum dollar reaches the project.
- E
Vendor ethics & community sourcing
Tech stack on a documented transition plan off boycotted vendors (Wix, Microsoft, Google, AWS). Deliberate preference for Muslim-owned and community vendors at equal or higher standard to commercial alternatives. No Qur'ānic verses or the name of Allah on mailers with high assumed trash-rate.
- F
Donor stewardship & protection
Restricted-fund honor rate, designation accuracy, refund and grievance policy. For mosques and cash-heavy collections: a documented oversight framework so jumu'ah-night cash is counted, witnessed, and bucketed against donor intent. Donor data architected to protect against big-tech surveillance — no 'Sign in with Google' on donate pages.
- G
Scholar consultation
Clear public identification of the religious scholars the org consults on zakat eligibility, fidya/kaffara pricing, qurbani timing, and other fiqh questions. Not necessarily a permanent standing board — but an honest, public answer to "who do you ask?"
- H
Programmatic clarity & impact
Defined program boundaries, sub-grantee disclosure, measurement of outcomes — tying each dollar a donor gave for a thing to the thing actually happening. Beneficiary counts and downstream chain depth disclosed where the program operates.
- I
Governance & regulatory record
Board independence, term limits, conflict-of-interest policy, succession plan. Plus filings on time, registration status across states, and any sanctions or enforcement history on the public record. Audit trail on every administrative action.
- J
Environmental stewardship
Khulafāʾ al-arḍ applied to operations. Energy, waste, packaging, supply-chain footprint. Substance over marketing. The optional Khulafāʾ al-Arḍ Stewardship Audit, run in collaboration with the Art and Wilderness Institute, deepens this dimension for orgs that opt in.
The mosque overlay — on top of the ten standards.
A masjid is more than a 501(c)(3) — it’s a lived community space and the religious infrastructure of a neighborhood. The ten standards apply to every nonprofit; the items below layer on top for masjids and are surfaced separately on every mosque page.
- M1
Community-health framework
Audited against 30+ community-health standards published openly in our catalog — all five fard salat in jamaa'ah, sisters' prayer space with respect and dignity, ghusl facility, named imam with publicly disclosed training, weekend school, hifz program, food pantry, iftar in Ramadan, zakat collection and distribution, counseling, marriage and conflict mediation, sister programming, senior programming, mental-health support, reentry support, and the rest. Each standard is shown on the mosque's page with the evidence source and confirmation tier (scraped, vouched by member, imam-attested, mosque-admin-confirmed, or audited).
- M2
Iqamah times — transparent and maintainable
Iqamah times that congregants can find easily on the masjid's own website, are accurate to actual practice, and stay current. Ihsan Standard provides a free, customizable iqamah-times tool — fixed times, offset-from-prayer rules, day-of-week overrides — that the masjid admin can embed on the masjid website with one line. No more outdated jumu'ah times pinned to the wall and forgotten online. Mosque admins manage their schedule through a simple dashboard; the embedded widget updates automatically.
- M3
Cash collection oversight
A documented framework for how jumu'ah-night and Ramadan-cash is counted, witnessed, recorded, and bucketed against donor intent. Multiple-signer collection, restricted-fund honor for fitra / qurbani / building / general / specific projects, and an independent reporting line so donors can trace their giving. The standard the 10 standards' Donor Stewardship rubric calls for, made explicit for the cash-heavy masjid environment.
- M4
Civic and sister-space engagement
Does the masjid support the local Muslim ecosystem — sister masjids, Muslim-owned local businesses, the broader civic infrastructure of the neighborhood? Community door-knocking and get-out-the-vote programs where appropriate. The masjid as anchor of the neighborhood, not just a Friday-only building.
- M5
Imam attestation + scholar consultation
A named imam, with an identifiable line of training (ijazas where they exist), publicly disclosed. For fiqh questions the masjid administers — zakat eligibility, fidya/kaffara pricing, qurbani timing, marriage rulings — a clear public answer to which scholars are consulted. Connects to the Scholar Consultation standard (G) with the names and the citations.
- M6
Donor protection on online giving
The donate page and online-giving forms architected to protect donors from big-tech surveillance: no 'Sign in with Google' on the donate page, no Meta Pixel logging zakat amounts, no third-party analytics scripts watching the donation flow. Donating to your masjid shouldn't be a surveillance event that follows the donor for years.
Disclosed, never hidden.
Ihsan Standard was built by Muslims who first wanted to apply these standards to their own small nonprofit. A handful of orgs connected to a maker are likely to appear in this directory over time. Where they do, three things hold:
- The conflict is disclosed on the org’s directory tile and on its detail page, in plain text, with the relationship named.
- The same rubric is applied — no softer scoring, no skipped domains, no private grading-on-a-curve.
- The same right-of-reply governs published findings. Public-record data is treated as public-record data regardless of who runs the org.
We do not score our own work in private and publish only when it flatters us. If a maker’s org scores below the bar, that shows on the page in the same way it would for anyone else.
Ihsan Standard Council (2026). The Ihsan Standard, v1.0. https://amanastandards.org/methodology. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.amana-v1.