Philanthropy is great but when done at a large scale without thinking it through, it can get poor people addicted to free money and thus, robbing them of their in-born resourcefulness. Hence, even when giving out Zakaat or helping people set up their own businesses, we try to align their incentives in a way that nudges them to think about and doing the right thing

We as human beings, and especially as Pakistanis, do our best work when challenged with limited resources. Thus, while Ihsaas is in the business of giving away or leveraging money as a means for self sufficiency, we operate with great restraint when giving away money and ensure matching contributions (in finances, effort and incentives) as much as possible from the beneficiaries and partners we work with

It is impossible to change people who don’t want to change. Hence, at Ihsaas, we only work with people and institutions who like to earn their way as opposed to handouts. This is evident in the screening mechanisms for the people who receive Zakaat all the way to the people we invest in for enterprise facilitation. We, as an institution, work towards systems that allow us to identify those with a desire for self-sufficiency and then work towards addressing it as partners and not as donors

There are many non-profit organizations working in the fields of health and education but they are doing so in isolation. They don’t do it by design but because there is no central body or platform to make connections across spheres by a referral mechanism for people to the right institutions. The Ihsaas model not only routes referrals (from its own field team) to the right institutions but it has also catalyzed partner institutions referring their own cases to Ihsaas and asking to refer them to other partners more specialized in that particular need i.e. our primary health partners now routinely refer cases to us that require specialized treatment for cancer or surgeries which we route to the appropriate entities