THE IHSAN STANDARD

The Ihsan Standard is a capacity-building legal and research project—dedicated to leadership excellence among minority-led and Muslim American nonprofits.

Muslim Americans, like other faith-based communities, rely upon the nonprofit sector to promote public good and build religious identity. The Muslim American nonprofit subsector is relatively young, diverse, and quickly expanding.

Yet, it also experiences internal and external friction, including a disparate amount of scrutiny in law, policy, and practice. The Muslim American nonprofit subsector faces overlapping challenges with other minority-led nonprofits. Overall, it is under-resourced.

Legal advice and healthy governance practices can be critical to the success of nonprofits. The Ihsan Standard intervenes with legal screenings in support of healthy nonprofit practices. The Ihsan Standard also conducts research to understand and address the resource challenges of minority-led and Muslim American nonprofits.

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Why Ihsan?

Ihsan encourages continual growth toward the highest levels of excellence and beautification, including philanthropic giving. At The Ihsan Standard, we adopt the word ihsan to encourage the highest levels of leadership excellence.

Goals

  • Elevate leadership excellence.
  • Encourage effective organizational decisions that benefit programs and clients.
  • Support operations within legal parameters and reduce scrutiny.
  • Encourage better stewardship of organizational assets and mission.
  • Promote community confidence.
  • Support ethical decision-making and transparency.
  • Promote the equitable participation of minority-led and Muslim American nonprofits.
  • Provide thought leadership about Muslim American nonprofits.
  • Develop capacity amongst legal providers—in support of nonprofits.
  • Advance knowledge about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
  • Unearth practices and challenges within the Muslim American nonprofit subsector.

Nonprofit legal screenings

We provide pro bono, confidential screenings to assess the legal health of a nonprofit organization. During the screening, we provide legal advice on governance, risk, and compliance matters. We also provide an individualized scorecard that reflects the legal health of the nonprofit. Further, we offer a leadership level training that addresses any legal gaps or exposure.

Screenings include:

Corporate Law and Governance

Understand the roles, responsibilities, and proper activities of a nonprofit board
Evaluate potential liabilities of board of directors
Operate within the law and its own bylaws
Review of charitable registration, state, and federal reports

Employment and Volunteer Issues

Review laws that apply (or don’t apply) to volunteers
Review job descriptions for employees
Evaluate distinctions between employees and independent contractors

Financial Oversight & Internal Controls

Comply with fundraising laws and regulations
Gifts, conflict of interest, and other policies
Appropriate reporting to the IRS and donors
Understand permissions and prohibitions on political activities
When needed, we connect clients with attorney referrals by jurisdiction and practice areas. For former clients, we offer access to a range of legal resources. We also provide ongoing legal workshops, ranging in topic from advocacy to governance.

Request a consultation for a nonprofit legal screening

Please note, a consultation does NOT create an attorney-client relationship.

Continuing legal education

To build capacity amongst lawyers, we provide ongoing continuing legal education (CLEs) about nonprofit laws, governance, diversity, equity, and Muslim Americans. We also work with lawyers to provide support for legal screenings across jurisdictions. For clients needing legal representation beyond our program, we connect them with attorneys by practice area and jurisdiction.

Attorneys wishing to join our referral list should complete this form

Research

In addition to building legal capacity, we also engage in rigorous research. Our research meets IRB guidelines and includes surveys, focus groups, and interviews. The research design is participatory and community informed.

Surveys go through multiple rounds of review and input from community leaders and researchers. Our research provides an opportunity to better understand Muslim American nonprofits. It also allows us to participate in the exchange of ideas to better our society.

We invite Muslim American nonprofits to participate in this research by emailing us at [email protected].