Kashif Shaikh wants to put the next generation of Muslim American philanthropy on the map.
For many years, Muslims in the United States gave mainly to institutions in immigrants’ home countries or to mosques and religious schools in America. But many younger Muslims have a different approach. Born and raised in the United States, they want to support groups that engage with broader society. In 2010, Mr. Shaikh, who then worked at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, and five professionals in their 30s started the Pillars Fund to pool their gifts and strengthen Muslim nonprofits.
Their goal: to amplify the voices of Muslim civic leaders and to fight bias. “It’s really important for American Muslims to have a seat at the table where change happens, where power exists,” Mr. Shaikh says.
The Pillars Fund awards grants to a wide variety of charities. Some groups focus on Muslim interests, like MPower Change, a new nonprofit that brings together Muslim activists nationwide who work for social, religious, racial, and economic justice. Others, like the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, in Chicago, provide social services to people of all faiths.
The fast-growing fund is trying to change the way Americans see their Muslim neighbors in the aftermath of a presidential campaign during which Donald Trump demonized Syrian refugees as potential terrorists, talked about closing mosques, and called for a ban on Muslims entering the country. Mr. Shaikh, 34, recognizes that it’s a difficult moment for American Muslims, but he says Pillars is in it for the long haul.
The fund is trying to change the way Americans see their neighbors.
“Anti-Muslim sentiment existed well before Trump, and unfortunately it’s going to exist after Trump,” he says. “What the current political climate has done is galvanize young leadership, but I don’t think that’s specific to the Muslim community.”
Support From Big Foundations
Pillars started small, as an all-volunteer project under the auspices of the Chicago Community Trust. The first year, the founding donors each gave $25,000, and the group won a $100,000 grant from the Russell Family Foundation. Mr. Shaikh’s organization awarded 10 grants out of a pool of about 20 proposals.
Today, the group’s roster of individual donors has grown to 25, and the fund has distributed more than $2 million in grants. In 2016, Mr. Shaikh and one of the co-founding donors started seeking support from large foundations. The effort has brought in grants from heavy hitters like the Ford, Nathan Cummings, and Open Society foundations.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded Pillars two grants totaling $1.8 million over four years. Nadia Brigham, a program officer at Kellogg, has been impressed by Mr. Shaikh’s ability to link the challenges that Muslims face to those of other minority groups.
“I would describe him as a breath of fresh air in this current social, political context,” Ms. Brigham says.
Last year, Pillars became a stand-alone nonprofit, and Mr. Shaikh left his job as a program officer at the McCormick Foundation to become the fund’s executive director.
Despite its independent status, Pillars still makes grants through a donor-advised fund at the Chicago Community Trust. Part of the reason is it’s easier to take advantage of the community foundation’s expertise, but it’s also because the trust’s imprimatur helps protect against attacks on Muslim organizations that benefit from the Pillars Fund.
“It allows us an extra layer of support,” Mr. Shaikh says.
A Turning Point
Leading the Pillars Fund, Mr. Shaikh draws on his experience as a grant maker and from a previous job raising big gifts at the United Way of Metro Chicago. He also brings his personal experience as the child of Muslim immigrants from Pakistan.
Mr. Shaikh was born in New York City but grew up in a middle-class suburb of Cincinnati. There, his family was one of the area’s few Muslim or immigrant families.
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He was inspired to work for social change by an incident in 2001, his senior year of high school. Timothy Thomas, an unarmed black man, was killed by a Cincinnati police officer, sparking days of civil unrest.
Mr. Shaikh calls the event a turning point in his life. He remembers being confused by how the shooting could happen. It made him think about where the frustration of African-Americans came from and what he considered the unfair response of his friends’ prosperous white parents. “That was the moment I knew I wanted to do something,” he says.
A few months after the shooting, another event, the September 11 terror attacks, redefined what it means to be Muslim in America.
Mr. Shaikh has two distinct — and telling — memories of that time. By then, his family had lived in their neighborhood for 15 years. One of their neighbors told Mr. Shaikh’s father that if anyone gave the family trouble, they should let the neighbor know right away. “It was a very, very sweet gesture,” Mr. Shaikh says.
His other memory is more unsettling. Two weeks after the attacks, Mr. Shaikh, his father, and his younger sister went to a pizza place they frequented and received a chilly reception.
“I’ll never forget sitting in that restaurant and feeling for the first time these eyes on us, just glaring eyes on the family,” he says. “I remember that like it was yesterday.”
As Pillars confronts the anti-Muslim sentiment prevalent today, Mr. Shaikh wants to make sure groups fighting bias have the resources they need, but he is also cautious about not letting the news cycle dictate the group’s grant making.
When Pillars is considering a grant request, Mr. Shaikh asks himself whether the project will still be important 10, 20, or even 50 years from now. “That’s a question that is always running through my brain,” he says. “I just don’t want to be too reactive.”
