Faith & Philanthropy, an exploratory joint grantmaking initiative that aims to shape “a philanthropic landscape that embraces the transformative potential of spirituality and faith to address the pressing challenges of our time,” recently released a Spiritual Imagination report featuring twelve grantees rooted in various spiritual traditions that are leveraging faith and spirituality for social impact.

Faith leaders and religious communities across the United States have time and time again played a pivotal role in promoting justice, democracy, and civic responsibility. Their ongoing work continues to be essential in shaping a more inclusive democratic process. In the lead-up to the 2024 Presidential Election, faith-inspired actors are stepping up to provide a wide range of tools and resources that foster civic engagement and strengthen our democracy. The leaders, initiatives, and organizations linked below are not only preparing voters but also addressing critical issues such as equitable access to the ballot and community healing in times of deep division and polarization.

If Vice President Kamala Harris wins the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, she will make history not just as the first woman, Black woman, and South Asian president but also as the person with the most religiously diverse background to ever hold the role.

Meet Yasmine Tujjar, university student, art lover, and interfaith changemaker. Growing up in a Syrian family in the US, practicing Islam but also attending a Christian school, she developed a passion for decreasing polarization among religious communities. Yasmine, who goes between her home in Maryland and her university in Montreal, Canada, is also an innoFaith Contributing Editor.

Meet Umar Hakim-Dey, board chair for LA Voice, a PICO California federation in the Faith in Action network  and founder of Inkerij, a social enterprise that provides advisory services for social impact organizations. Originally from, and still residing in, Compton, California, Umar is an innovative community organizer, committed bridge-builder, and deep-hearted advocate for social justice.

Meet Nikhil Mandalaparthy, Deputy Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights, and a committed advocate for pluralism and human rights. All over the world, we’ve seen how when religion and nationalism intertwine, it can drive hate, violence, and injustice. Inspired by his own faith, other traditions, and bhakti poets, Nikhil works to foster inclusive expressions of Hindu identity.

Meet Ambereen Khan, executive producer and host of Inspired, a production of Interfaith Voices, an award-winning independent public radio show that fosters interfaith understanding through exploring how faith intersects with news, politics, and culture. Ambereen is a beautiful interviewer and also a longtime interfaith advocate and innovator. Among many other things, she was co-founder of Muslim Advocates and the first Muslim to chair the Interfaith Alliance Foundation. We are honored to count her as an ally and advisor to innoFaith.

Meet Sara Abdel, passionate and collaborative interfaith advocate for women, refugees, and economic justice. Originally from Egypt, Sara’s search for knowledge and justice and commitment to putting her faith into action has taken her to Capitol Hill and numerous local and global organizations and companies. Founder of Thrivers on the Move, she now directs her energies toward supporting immigrants and refugees to find jobs and careers where they can thrive.

Meet Brie Loskota, new Executive Director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, former Executive Director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC, co-founder of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Incubator, and many other things. She is a curious and creative champion of pluralism, a deep thinker, and a prolific doer.

Meet Sadaf Taimur, mother, PhD student, Dalai Lama Fellow, and passionate advocate, educator, and innovator. Sadaf previously developed a project to address gender discrimination in education in her native Pakistan. Now, she is engaged in action-oriented research on transformative sustainability education, which recently won her a Green Talents Award from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Meet Reem Rahman, passionate mom and systems change expert, one of the folks behind the beautiful changemaking.net resource from Ashoka in our resource library. Reem brings her deep faith, curiosity, and commitment to everything she does, which now includes creating the most compelling homeschool we’ve ever heard of and writing a children’s book.

They say a crisis reveals who you really are. And sometimes, we don’t like what we see. This might be the case for faith institutions in the current crisis. We should hope that it is.

Meet Amira Abouhussein, Program Manager and Conflict Resolution Liaison at the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. In between frequent trips around the world for her peacebuilding work, Amira contributed her beautiful energy and passion to helping us design and pilot the Interfaith Youth Innovators Summit last month.

Many faith traditions have long been rooted in a relationship with the Earth—particularly indigenous traditions, but also others, such as Jainism. And some early advocates of the environment and animal welfare were inspired by faith—such as Francis of Assisi and Buddhist emperor Ashoka. Yet the concept of ecotheology has developed largely within the last half century or so as the world has had to come to terms with the ecological destruction wrought by human society. Ecotheology looks at the relationship between religion and nature and seeks to find solutions to the current environmental crisis.

Impact investing, the practice of leveraging private capital for social and environmental gains by making investments that produce social and environmental returns in addition to financial returns, has gained significant steam in the last several years. It has also begun to make inroads into the investment and mission strategies of faith-based institutions and investors.

Burke’s movement went viral last year when #metoo caught fire on social media. Few may know or suspect that like many social movements before it, this one, too, emerges from the vision of a faith-rooted leader. Few may also be aware of the systemic change work at its core - empowering survivors to lead change in ending sexual violence. Burke calls it “empowerment through empathy.” When the hashtag becomes an artifact in social media memory, that hard work will continue as it started, quietly and powerfully in the efforts of survivor leaders to eradicate sexual violence.

Even while we as faith communities look outward to engage in social change in our societies, we also must confront the challenges within our own ranks - from racism to violence to sexual crimes by clergy and more. Social transformation always begins at home. We cannot ignore the destructive things done in the name of our religions or under the auspices of our religious institutions. But we also cannot just lament. We need new approaches to confronting these demons. In India, Basit Jamal, is setting an example, empowering young people to take Islam back from those who use it to promote extremist ideologies. Learn more about his empathy-rooted work in this article and video by Ashoka India at Youth Ki Awaaz.

Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Core, and Rami Nashashibi, founder of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, were recently named by CNN as two of the 25 most influential American Muslims, among other Muslim pioneers. Hear them tell stories that inspire them to do the work they do.

Social innovation requires an enabling ecosystem, and one of the key players in that ecosystem is the philanthropic sector. Innovative philanthropists can help empower individual organizations to take risks while fostering collective impact in the process. With their faith under attack, one group of American Muslims and their allies are organizing to support Muslim change-makers who are creating solutions in their communities. In the process, they're reshaping perceptions of Islam in America. Read about Pillars Fund and their new approach to faith-based philanthropy in this article from Buzzfeed.