World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists acquires micro waqf crowdfunder Narwi

Photo: Narwi won the Ethical Finance Initiative Award 2015, organised by Thomson Reuters and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank. L-R: Muhammad Yunus, (Founder, Grameen Bank), Mohammad Raafi Hossain (Narwi), James Angus (Head of Emerging Businesses, Thomson Reuters MENA), Tirad Mahmoud (CEO, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank) 

The World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists has reached an agreement to acquire the Narwi Waqf crowdfunding platform, WCMP said in a statement today.

Qatar-based Silatech, Narwi's original investor, will continue to be a partner in Narwi, said WCMP, without disclosing any financial details. 

Narwi currently connects donors to direct development needs of beneficiaries in the Middle East and North Africa and WCMP's acquisition aims to advance the platform's capacity to reach a wider global market. 

“The acquisition of Narwi allows the World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists to significantly scale our efforts to connect our donor network to some of the most pressing challenges that are occurring around the world in a real-time and transparent way," said Dr. Tariq Cheema, President of WCMP.

"At the same time, Narwi’s waqf-based crowdfunding approach is a proven model to crowdsource communities to come together for purposeful and sustainable change,” he added.

Narwi founder Mohammad Raafi Hossain said, “The Narwi platform has a tremendous amount of potential to not only alleviate certain issues facing our communities around the world, but to completely eradicate them. With the power of the crowd and a platform that has the technological capacity to scale, we feel strongly about the future of the Narwi platform under WCMP’s strategic leadership.”

Narwi allows donors to support microentrepreneurs of their choice by establishing an endowment, or “Narwi-Waqf” with as little as $25. The platform allows donors to provide no-cost capital to a network of field partners, which are primarily microfinance institutions, lowering their risk and enabling them to serve marginalised, higher risk and higher social impact beneficiaries.

U.S.-based World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists is a global network of affluent individuals, grantmaking foundations, and socially responsible corporations. It was established in 2008 and works across public, private, and social sectors. 

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