Paper Title: The Determinants of Donors’ Behaviour Toward Islamic Charities: A Phenomenological Inquiry 

Author:        Mohsin Ali, Yasir Aziz, Najeeb Zada, Fadillah Mansor

Publisher:    International Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Finance and Management, 19(4), 1159–1177.

The vast majority of philanthropic and donor-behaviour research is centred on Western contexts. Western charitable giving is often motivated by secular altruism, tax incentives, or social status. In contrast, Zakat is one of the Five Pillars of Islam—it is a mandatory wealth tax rather than voluntary philanthropy. Therefore, the psychological determinants of who to give it to are fundamentally different.

This paper investigates the underlying psychological and practical factors that motivate Muslims to pay their mandatory religious alms to specific Charity Organizations (COs) in Pakistan. Moving away from traditional quantitative approaches, the authors employ a qualitative phenomenological design, utilizing in-depth interviews with 16 participants from diverse urban and rural backgrounds.

The primary findings indicate that donor behavior is heavily influenced by four key factors: trust in the charity organization, the fairness of the disbursement mechanism, transparent financial disclosure, and public awareness of the charity’s activities.

The donors care intensely about the end-stage of their money. They evaluate whether the disbursement is fair, reaches genuine beneficiaries, and adheres strictly to Islamic guidelines.

Trust serves as the core foundation of donor behavior. Past publicized scandals and institutional mismanagement significantly damage public confidence, making established donor trust a primary prerequisite for contributions.

The willingness to donate is directly tied to an organization’s open financial reporting. Donors demand clear accounting of how funds are allocated between administrative costs and direct aid.

Donor behavior is strongly influenced by how well a charity communicates its real-world societal impact. Donors frequently choose organizations whose projects and success stories are visible and well-publicized.

Even though Zakat is an obligatory pillar of Islam, donors do not blindly hand over funds. They actively scrutinize organizations based on performance, accountability, and operational fairness.

Mismanagement or publicity around sector scandals severely heightens donor scepticism, leading donors to either withhold funds or shift them toward smaller, localized, or private channels where transparency is higher.

To retain existing donors and attract new ones in a competitive non-profit environment, Islamic charities must move beyond relying solely on religious obligation. They must adopt modern communications emphasizing proof of impact and radical financial transparency.

The research ultimately aims to help Islamic charities and Zakat management institutions rebuild public confidence in the face of modern competitive environments and publicized scandals. By explicitly connecting donor reluctance to issues of financial opacity and institutional mismanagement, the article grounds its academic theory in harsh real-world realities.

To survive in a highly competitive non-profit sector, COs are advised to:

1. Ensure complete financial disclosure to stakeholders.

2. Continuously spread awareness about what the charity has achieved and precisely how funds are disbursed.

3. Use innovative approaches to dispel public misperceptions and counteract the damage done by industry scandals.

It is a timely and valuable addition to the literature on Islamic social finance. Nonetheless, a sample size of 16 inherently limits the generalizability of the findings. Pakistan is a massive, highly diverse nation of over 240 million people. Projecting the views of 16 individuals onto the broader macro-behavior of the country’s population should be done with extreme caution. The qualitative findings are robust in identifying what the determinants are, but the study could have been significantly strengthened by incorporating a quantitative phase (e.g., a widespread survey) to measure the magnitude and frequency of these attitudes across the wider population.