Founder’s Corner: SNMC Innovates Fundraising

31st March 2010 was the closing date with the city of Ottawa for 3.2-acre land at 3020 Woodroffe Ave. In February 2010,  we realized SNMC had $300,000 shortfall to close the deal. We got inspired by the election of Obama as USA president, raising millions of dollars with online donation using the internet from millions of supporters. We decided to release a YouTube along with online PayPal donation method for SNMC. As usual, some supported and some opposed these ideas. Still, we hired a student to explore and create a YouTube video with our vision and mission, etc., seeking to raise $300,000 but with a slogan: a dollar makes a difference.  SNMC released this first YouTube in early March, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2quYFm4LZ4 and was viewed by 4,000 visitors in just 3 weeks. It was a tremendous hit and we received donations from all over Canada. This also helped us to introduce online PayPal donation, first of its kind among Ottawa mosques.

Also, in 2010, Alhamdulillah, again first in Ottawa, we raised over $3,000 from 2/3 mosques who supported SNMC to do fund raising during Ramadan, 2010. We investigated debit/credit machines and then with the help of BMO, decided to rent two debit machines from Moneris. Initially few mosques were against, but it was a great hit for SNMC for fund raising in its own musallah and during the out of town fund raising trips. Alhamdu Lillah, gradually all the mosques in Ottawa started adopting these machines.

We also introduced a new, very successful concept of 750 prayer spots, each valued $2,500 and 1000 building blocks, each valued $1000. Again, after initial reluctance, many other Ottawa mosques started using prayer sport concept to raise funds. Thus, 2010 was a big milestone year for SNMC when we embraced innovation of tools and technology for masjid fund rising, introduced online donation by PayPal,  debit credit machine and YouTube videos.

We thank all brothers and sisters who helped us in building and adopting these new concepts and methods of fund raising and thank all the donors and volunteers.