National Zakat Foundation reaches Muslims in need 80% faster with Microsoft automation

Shereen fell behind on her rent payments and was facing eviction with nowhere else to go. Mustafa hoped to transfer his pharmacy skills to his new home country but couldn’t afford the course that would certify him to work in the UK. While Layla and Amaad waited for their asylum claim to be processed, they welcomed a baby boy—but could not afford formula, newborn clothes, or other necessities. Each of these individuals, whose names have been changed to honor their privacy, turned to National Zakat Foundation (NZF) to bridge these gaps. In the process, they grew closer to their Muslim community and participated in a tradition that stretches back more than 1,400 years.  

NZF is the UK’s only nonprofit dedicated to collecting and distributing zakat, a pillar of Islam that instructs the faithful to give to those who are less fortunate. Since its founding in 2011, NZF has allocated more than £28 million, helping 43,000 people with housing, job training, education, and emergency relief.  

NZF is working to expand its individual grants and services as the UK’s cost of living crisis both pushes people toward poverty and strains families’ charitable giving budget. The nonprofit is leveraging Microsoft Power Platform, Copilot Studio, Dynamics 365, and other technology to aid people with the most urgent needs, faster.  

“We hold the community together so it can support itself,” says Monir Mohammed, Head of Technology at National Zakat Foundation. “Microsoft products help us come together and help each other.” 

Empowering nonprofit staff to leverage technology

Like many nonprofits, NZF is acutely aware of how it spends money. It aims to strengthen Muslim communities by maximizing programmatic funds, every pound of which results in a 73-fold savings for the UK government, according to an Indiana University study. With AI-powered tools, NZF staff are building solutions to help more people—on a tight budget.  

“Microsoft’s low-code, no-code strategy empowers our business users to take ownership and build applications that resonate with our community,” says Atif Qureshi, Board Adviser at National Zakat Foundation. Nontechnical NZF staff used the low-code, AI-boosted Microsoft Power Platform to craft a straightforward set of website-embedded forms that would be easy to navigate for applicants, some of whom speak English as a second language or have low digital literacy.  

Meanwhile, the head of NZF’s giver services department learned how to use Copilot Studio and built a generative AI chatbot in just three weeks. In fact, he used Copilot to teach him how to use the AI platform.  

Called Zaki, the chatbot is integrated into the nonprofit’s website and responds to potential donors’ questions. Zaki references NZF’s knowledge bank and provides concise, conversational answers with links to more in-depth articles. The development and testing process helped the NZF team to further build out their public knowledge bank, creating a more thorough resource available around the clock.  

“With this technology, we’re able to develop helpful solutions without being experts in that field,” Mohammed says. Without the need to hire external developers, NZF can direct even more support to individuals in distress. 

Reaching people with the highest need

NZF receives about 10,000 applications for aid in an average month. Through technology, the nonprofit is prioritizing individuals with the most urgent cases. 

The information collected via the Microsoft Power Platform forms flows into Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Dataverse. The unified enterprise data platform enables NZF to identify information gaps. For example, they realized that some forms did not ask about applicants’ disability status—a factor that can impact a person’s need for support. With a few clicks in Power Apps, the team adjusted the forms to collect a more complete picture. 

To quickly determine which individuals faced the greatest need, NZF worked with external partners to create a vulnerability score. This metric evaluates factors such as bank account balance, family size, employment, and more—data points securely housed in Dynamics 365—to quantify the urgency of an individual’s request. A Copilot Studio agent calculates the score in moments, then a Power Apps agent shuffles the greatest-need cases to the top of the queue.  

“This system gives people somewhere to ask for and receive help, and it allows us to help people with the highest priority first,” Mohammed says. “Now people don’t have to suffer in silence.”

Distributing funds faster

While NZF aims to respond to applicants as soon as possible, it used to take four to five months to decide on and give individual grants. Backlogs during especially busy times, such as Ramadan, caused even longer waits. Now, automations and NZF’s unified data model have reduced wait times by 80%.  

Staff used to spend hours completing manual steps such as verifying applicants’ ID cards and analyzing bank statements. Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio agents now evaluate applications in moments. AI functionality, including computer vision, enable the agents to securely assess a variety of file types and accounts that individuals upload. These automated actions either decide an applicant’s eligibility or flag the case for human review.  

NZF continues to add Power Automate efficiencies, incorporate automations, and fine-tune the application review process. The team is working on further reducing wait times to just three days or as soon as four hours. NZF disburses grants daily, so it could be possible for a person in need to apply for and receive support in the same day. 

Timely responses can prevent hunger, homelessness, and more, Qureshi says. "By reducing the amount of bureaucracy, we’re helping people in their time of need before it’s too late.” 

Understanding supporter impact

NZF facilitates an interconnectedness that is foundational to the Muslim faith, Mohammed explains. “We’re making a chain between those who have something to give and those in the community who need to receive. It creates a bond,” he says. 

Donors can choose how their gifts are used, from housing to hardship relief. NZF used Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement to build a donation tracking solution called ZakaTracker to ensure donors’ preferences are honored and to communicate their impact. Earmarked gifts are tagged in Dynamics 365, and NZF’s application review solution identifies high-priority cases that match that preferred donation category. ZakaTracker automatically emails each donor when their gift is distributed. “People who give money are elated that they achieved what they wanted with their charitable giving,” Mohammed says.  

Donors can also interact with a live zakat map populated with up-to-date information from the Microsoft Dataverse. The color-coded map shows the balance of giving versus receiving zakat in each county, and visitors can see specifics such as the amount distributed and the number of people served in a particular area.   

NZF uses this data-powered visualization to strategize on where to open or expand in-person hubs to distribute funds, upskill individuals, and build community. The nonprofit also partners with research organizations to share anonymized zakat data, helping researchers “understand poverty in real time,” Mohammed says.  

Personalizing donors’ experience

Dynamics 365 collects a “data footprint” for each donor, then personalizes outreach based on those preferences. For example, NZF can send a jobs-focused email to someone who has directed their gifts to employment programs in the past. “Curating campaigns is better for donors because they get information about the projects they want, and they are likely to give more because it is personal,” Qureshi says. "That helps us generate more funds to help more people.” 

Technology empowers NZF to streamline reporting and personalization at scale, too. Many foundations and other partners invest in a particular area or demographic, and they expect the nonprofit to demonstrate how that money reached the intended beneficiaries.  

Dynamics 365 and a unified data strategy allow NZF fundraising and grant disbursement teams to collaborate using a single source of truth. The CRM tracks what funding source financed which grant on a granular level so the nonprofit can show specific results to large-scale supporters. “Dynamics makes allocating the funds and reporting on impact incredibly easy,” Mohammed says. “We can prove through our data that large donors’ projects align with who we are serving. That generates trust. Our funding from these donors has exploded.”        

NZF is channeling this productivity into meeting increasing needs in the UK’s Muslim community. “We’re always thinking of scaling so people don’t slide further into poverty,” Mohammed says. “The information now at our fingertips is revolutionizing our organization. With automation and technology, our efficiency can hypothetically be infinite.”  

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