Introduction

Rationale:

1. Islamic finance has been focused on repurposing western conventional products and making them Shariah compliant rather than designing new, impactful products. Despite increasing demand, most in the Islamic finance sphere have side-stepped fundamental Islamic finance principles in order to maximise profits. In so doing, we miss an opportunity to center the core objective of the Islamic economy, which is to create wealth equality.
2. The tenets of Islam effectively serve as design principles for creating capital products that uplift enterprises serving the most vulnerable members of society through job creation, entrepreneurship, co-ownership (co-operatives) and fair trade.

Emerging Programmatic Ideas:

1. Convene a roundtable with stakeholders to understand challenges and opportunities for Islamic finance practitioners building these solutions; investigate gaps and opportunities; and what it will take to reimagine and redesign Islamic financial products to transfer wealth to marginalised groups through trade and enterprise
2. Create a concept paper describing the outcomes of the roundtable and the opportunity to redesign Islamic finance products that distribute capital to responsible Muslim and non-Muslim enterprises using Shariah principles.
3. Design and deploy Shariah-aligned financial product(s). This will involve a consultative design process and a number of experiments as well as a facilitated process to articulate the purpose, values, and strategic roadmap for the Collective going forward.

Resources

• 🚧 WIP concept paper

Planning + Progress

To-do

Draft concept paper

💠

Draft concept paper

Sheeza Shah

💠

Execute MOU with core partners

💠

Secure financial + in kind resources

💠

Launch the collaborative design process

Sheeza Shah

💠

Convene initial roundtable

Sheeza Shah

In progress

Identify core partners

💠

Identify core partners

Astrid ScholzSheeza Shah

Put together the project team

💠

Put together the project team

Complete

Identify sector / geography / demographic intersection

💠

Identify sector / geography / demographic intersection

Sheeza ShahAstrid Scholz

Please give some thought to potential roles + mark up the stakeholder table

🎯

Please give some thought to potential roles + mark up the stakeholder table

Sheeza ShahAstrid Scholz

Finalise invitation email copy

Finalise invitation email copy

Sheeza ShahAstrid Scholz

Schedule meeting with ZU, Armillaria & UpEffect

Sheeza ShahAstrid ScholzCameron Burgess

💌 Stakeholders:

• In terms of stakeholders, we make the following distinctions:
• Core Team: 3 - 5 organizations who form the operational core of the project, and take responsibility for fundraising, experience design, coordination and project management.
• Key informants: They have direct experience of the capital ecosystem as entrepreneurs, investors, intermediaries, or others who are touching capital. These are people we want to at least interview, and potentially invite to a Define and / or Design workshop;
• Contributors: These are technical experts that intersect with the ecosystem, and who have pertinent capacities that we might want to tap, e.g. financial engineers who could help build a new product, conduct desk research, or participate in the analysis, typically in a paid capacity;
• Influencers: These are people we want to invite to the Define and Design workshop because they are in key positions of authority in financial and / or government institutions and are allies for advancing the capital product and interventions we identify in the project.
• Funders: These are companies, foundations and / or individuals who are aligned in their interests and can contribute financial resources to the project. They may or may not be potential investors in the capital product(s) we create in the project.