The Impact Mind

Fareeha Mahmood

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781641377232
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

Are you striving to effect positive change in your community or the world at large? In her book The Impact Mind: Unlocking Your Ability to Create Change, author Fareeha Mahmood uncovers the 14 key principles that can help you become a more impactful individual and make a difference in your society.

In this book, you'll learn how to incorporate the 14 principles through stories including:

• Amany Killawi's desire to inspire and provide a platform to the global Muslim community after 9/11, which led her to discover the power of crowdfunding and co-found LaunchGood
• Rehana Nathoo's push to create her own impact investing strategy firm, Spectrum Impact
• Chris Molaro's integrated behavioral health platform, NeuroFlow, which remotely tracks and manages mental health through data and evidence-based practices.

The Impact Mind is a non-fiction book that speaks to driven and ambitious individuals who are looking to explore impact-oriented roles and become socially conscious thinkers. You will love this book if you are curious to learn how to maximize your impact and shape your life around your mission.

Principle #1: Turn Passion into Purpose

Amany Killawi

The Impetus for Impact

The clear sky radiated a brilliant blue across Detroit, Michigan. The whole summer, the weather had been humid and balmy, but a cold front had been creeping into the city. That Tuesday in September, while Amany Killawi’s family prepared to move back home to Syria, the sun remained resilient and shined bright.4 Before heading out, they made sure their suitcases were packed, locked, and ready to be loaded onto the car.

But their excitement and anticipation to return home were crushed once they got the news. This wasn’t just any Tuesday. It was Tuesday, September 11, 2001.

American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were hijacked and intentionally crashed into the north and south World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan.5 As a result of the two crashes in New York City and two more in Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, 2,753 people died.6 This attack on America’s homeland was one of the most devastating periods in contemporary history; one whose impact reverberates to this day. Its repercussions have undeniably affected and shaped the lives of people across the country.

Back in Detroit, the Killawis’ lives were changed forever. Their flight was canceled, and they decided to stay in Detroit to continue nurturing their home. From that moment on, Amany’s purpose in life also started taking shape.

Amany mentioned, “I remember many years later, having this reflection that I have a unique opportunity of living here in the US, an opportunity that my cousins are never going to have. Look at what’s happening today in Syria; that could have been my family. So, there was a sense of impact that actually stemmed from feeling a sense of privilege.” Although as a young Arab, Muslim, and hijabi woman, Amany has been deprived of certain advantages, she was still grateful for the ones she did have.

Amany’s privileges were her superpowers, and she strove to use those powers to uplift others and drive meaningful, social change.

Using Privilege for Good

It wasn’t immediately clear to Amany how she would apply the advantages she had to help others, but deciding to begin a career in social work seemed like the best idea. This field focuses on enhancing the well-being of individuals, families, and communities. Social workers empower people to make use of their skills, talents, and resources for their own betterment.

The aim of social work strongly resonated with Amany. This discipline also aligned with the values she adopted from Islam. She grew up understanding the importance of kindness, generosity, and helping others, especially those who aren’t provided with the same blessings and privileges.

Growing up in Detroit in a post-9/11 America, she was not a stranger to Islamophobia and discrimination. For that reason, it was even more important for her to show others the true teachings of Islam through the embodiment of those core principles.

In addition to her faith affecting her career decision, Amany was influenced by the poverty-stricken parts of her hometown—in 2017, 34.5 percent of Detroit residents lived below the poverty line.7 Hence, Amany aspired to equip her community members, especially Muslim youth living in inner-city Detroit, with the same resources and opportunities she possessed.

Fundraising to Foster Impact

From social work, Amany eventually got involved in community organizing and found a love for youth organizing. She was inspired by the drive, tenacity, and ambitions of young individuals who had the potential to change the future. Amany wanted to help them achieve the goals they may have previously envisioned as being unattainable.

Amany was especially passionate about jump-starting Detroit Minds & Hearts Fellowship, an incubator for community initiatives for social justice led by Muslim, inner-city youth. The program would teach participants about cross-cultural and cross-generational leaders in social justice and help them develop essential leadership skills.8 Young individuals would then use those teachings to identify local issues and implement sustainable action-plans to create a positive impact. The fellowship would also support the participants’ community initiatives or college education through a scholarship.9

To make Detroit Minds & Hearts Fellowship a reality, Amany would need to procure at least $10,000 to get the program started.10 It wasn’t possible for Amany to fund it herself, and she couldn’t turn to grants or a network of donors to fund it either. Instead, she turned to her community. The same community that galvanized her into a path of social impact.

Amany began crowdfunding, or financing the fellowship by soliciting contributions from a large group of people. Amany and her team sought help from Chris Blauvelt, a prominent Muslim figure in the crowdfunding space. They set up a crowdfunding page for the Detroit Minds & Hearts Fellowship on IndieGoGo and got to work.11

To incentivize people to back the campaign, the team offered different items such as thank you cards, pins, and community service hours where volunteers would help mosques or local centers. All of Amany’s team members were invested in the success of the project, as they reached out to community members, personal connections, and networks, and demonstrated their passion and excitement for the Fellowship.

Through these different efforts, Chris and Amany were able to raise $10,000 with the help of ninety-two backers. Their initiative was so successful they even made it to the front page of IndieGoGo.

Amany learned through this experience, “When you put a lot of work into it and get friends and family excited, you see the results. You see who you know and didn’t know come together and support you.” Amany witnessed the power of crowdfunding, specifically its role in forming a community and creating exposure around the cause she was advocating for as well as making it a success.

When discussing the outcome of the campaign, Amany, Chris, and Omar Hamid highlighted the role of crowdfunding in telling stories. Not only did this type of alternative financing allocate capital where it was desperately needed, but it also acquainted donors with the community they were trying to help. The three of them wondered if the storytelling aspect of crowdfunding campaigns could benefit the Muslim community, as it could potentially address the ignorance that intensifies Islamophobia and racism.

They asked themselves, “How can we create a Muslim-community-oriented crowdfunding platform?”

Launching LaunchGood

Chris, Amany, and Omar’s first step in creating a crowdfunding platform was to identify a sizable market. Currently, there are 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide and over four hundred niche crowdfunding sites, yet none of them are focused on Muslims. Amany specifically mentioned how the “community of 287 million GUMmies, or Global Urban Muslims who are Educated in English Speaking,” have had...