National Zakat Foundation

The UK’s only Zakat focused organisation

The National Zakat Foundation (NZF) gives grants to UK Muslims in poverty for basic essentials like food, clothing, shelter, job training, legal help and debt relief.

This support lets people get on the path to being financially independent and it allows them to feel confident about their future.

NZF also invests in leading institutions and emerging leaders, such as future imams, scholars and community activists.

Through this investment, we make real and lasting change by supporting and developing institutions who provide us with guidance for the challenges we face at home, at work and in wider society.

What do we do?

We empower individuals

Through our Economic Empowerment Programme, we award financial grants wherever we feel able to improve somebody’s long-term situation.

This support is used for meeting the costs of basic essentials such as food, shelter, clothing and travel costs.

The grant also funds empowerment activities that help people in hardship reduce their expenses or increase their income, and often includes job training, legal costs and debt relief.

Since our establishment in 2011, we’ve distributed over £10 million of Zakat to support over 10,000 people in the UK.

In 2018 alone, we distributed £3.4 million of Zakat and supported over 2,500 people.

Meet Muslims we’ve supported ⟶

We Empower Leaders

NZF’s Leadership Investment Programme invests in emerging Muslim leaders and organisations that are working for Islam to flourish in the UK.

They seek to improve one or more of the following:

Public perception towards Islam and Muslims in the UK

Religious scholarship and religious literacy in the UK

The representation of Muslims in the UK

This programme provides access to grants, mentoring support and funding that allows individuals to access education or other opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise be able to pursue.

In 2018, NZF’s leadership fund supported 30 individuals from across the UK and 6 flagship UK projects and institutions, including the Cambridge Muslim College and the Muslim Council of Britain’s Visit My Mosque.

Discover more ⟶

How do we do it?

Our research shows that in order for Zakat distribution to be effective, it must be unified, local, and balanced.

Unified: We pool Zakat collection to enable coordinated and measured distribution.

Focused: We distribute Zakat in the UK to focus on serving the society and culture we know best.

Balanced: We distribute Zakat across the eight categories mentioned in the Qur’an (9:60) in the UK to serve the society we know best and for which we are most responsible.

Want more information?

What is Zakat?

Learn more about Zakat. What is it and do you have to pay it?

Zakat Calculator

We show you how to calculate Zakat. Find out how much you owe.

Stories

Discover how your Zakat can supports Muslims in the UK.

Pay Zakat

Pay your Zakat now.

Trust us

We’re committed to ensuring our Zakat distribution is legally sound, purposeful and effective. That’s why we have a Strategy, Policy and Research team that consults a wide range of expert advisers, including scholars, researchers and practitioners.

We’re frequently audited by a leading auditor, and our audits always come back clean.