You're pledging to donate if the project hits its minimum goal and gets approved. If not, your funds will be returned.
$499,950 left to reach the funding goal.
We started IASER in July 2026 to bring Muslim researchers, scholars and technology professionals together to work on AI safety.
Since then, more than 100 people have joined. We've made progress on AI evaluations, developed tools such as Ansari, and started work on practical guidance and training.
The difficulty is keeping everything moving. Most of our members are volunteers with jobs and other commitments. We have research projects underway, but not enough people with dedicated time to coordinate them, follow up on work or maintain what we've built.
We're looking to raise $100,000–$500,000 over the next 12 months to address this. Our first priority is to support the people already doing the work, finish what we've started and build a stronger foundation for IASER.
We have no shortage of ideas or people interested in helping. What we lack is the capacity to organise the work properly.
Our first priority is project coordination. With more than 100 members, we need a better system for matching volunteers to tasks, making responsibilities clear and following projects through to completion. We also need to be more realistic about how many projects we can take on.
The second priority is our existing research.
JaleesBench and FaithfulBench examine how AI models answer religious questions and behave under pressure. JaleesWeights explores model post-training, while Ansari provides a free Islamic AI assistant.
We want to continue these projects, improve the evaluations and publish findings that others can check and build on. This requires computing resources, technical work, review and maintenance.
We're also developing an Islamic Ethics Guidebook for Tech Professionals. Many Muslims working in technology face questions about the systems they're helping build, particularly around surveillance, discrimination and other potential harms. We're gathering evidence of these challenges and working on guidance that addresses real situations. We're also collaborating with Yaqeen Institute on an Islamic Ethics Framework for AI.
Another area is education. Dr Waleed Kadous and collaborators have already developed and delivered practical AI workshops for imams. In a pilot survey of 84 imams, more than half reported using AI in their religious work, but fewer than half felt equipped to answer questions about it.
We want to improve the training and make it available more widely, with particular attention to misinformation, fabricated references and knowing when AI outputs need checking.
We don't expect to do everything at once. During the first two months, we'll review our projects, agree on priorities and assign responsibilities based on the funding available.
I'd consider the funding worthwhile if, a year from now, IASER is finishing more of the work it starts and is less dependent on a handful of volunteers.
We'll track completed projects, research publications, volunteer contributions and the use of our resources.
For our research, we'll report what we've tested and found, including results that don't support our expectations.
For the ethics guidebook and training, we'll ask the people using them whether the material addresses their actual needs and what should change.
We'll also review finances and project progress every quarter.
After six months, we'll decide which activities are worth continuing and which need to change. At the end of the year, we'll publish a report on what we've achieved, what hasn't worked and how the money was spent.
We're requesting between $100,000 and $500,000 for 12 months.
Most of the budget is for people. We need dedicated time for research, engineering, coordinating volunteers and keeping projects moving.
The remaining funding would cover research costs, maintaining tools such as Ansari, preparing educational resources, training and essential running expenses.
We will adjust the scope depending on how much we raise.
At $100,000, we'd concentrate on project coordination, essential services and a few priority projects.
At $250,000, we'd be able to support more research and community activities.
At $500,000, we could deliver the wider programme and bring in dedicated staff or contractors where needed.
These are estimates. We won't commit to spending until we've confirmed actual costs and responsibilities.
IASER is new, but our team brings experience from AI research, technology companies, education, Islamic scholarship and nonprofit organisations.
Our Steering Committee includes:
Dr Waleed Kadous has worked in AI for more than 25 years, including senior roles at Google, Uber and Canva. He developed Ansari and the AI for Imams course and has contributed to our model evaluation research.
Dr Mohammed Ansari is a senior applied scientist at Amazon with a PhD in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Dr Agnes Chong has worked in nonprofit leadership and philanthropy, including roles at the American Muslim Community Foundation and CAIR.
Bara Elhag brings experience in technology sales, business development and consulting.
Abdus-Sami Hoda works in education and technology leadership and is involved with Ummatics Institute and Mubeen Institute.
Hassan Kazi has a background in management consulting at Deloitte and Accenture and serves on the board of Justice For All Canada.
Our Islamic Advisory Board includes Dr Mohamed AbuTaleb, Vice President of Research at Yaqeen Institute, and Shaykh Umer Khan, a member of the Fiqh Council of North America and technology executive.
These are not full-time positions at IASER.
We also have work that people can examine today:
JaleesBench and FaithfulBench: Published research evaluating AI responses to religious questions and behaviour under pressure.
JaleesWeights: Post-training experiments with publicly available documentation and preliminary findings.
Ansari: A free Islamic AI assistant with publicly available code.
Islamic Ethics Guidebook for Tech Professionals: Research and guidance currently being developed.
AI for Imams: A six-hour practical workshop developed and delivered by Dr Waleed Kadous and Dr Hidayath Ansari.
We've also organised public discussions and presentations about AI and its implications for Muslim communities.
Some of this work began before IASER officially launched. We're now bringing these efforts together and trying to build an organisation that can support them properly.
More information about our team is available at iaser.ai/about.
The biggest risk is spreading ourselves too thin.
A lot of our work depends on people contributing in their spare time. It's easy for a project to start with enthusiasm and then slow down when other commitments take priority.
Funding would give us more capacity, but we'd still need to make decisions about what to pursue. We could underestimate the cost of a project, struggle to find the right people or discover that something we've developed isn't particularly useful.
We plan to review projects regularly and be willing to stop work that isn't progressing.
If we don't raise enough money, we'll scale back rather than try to deliver the full programme.
If the wider plan doesn't succeed, the most likely outcome is that some research and community resources take longer to complete, and IASER remains dependent on volunteer time.
We'll report problems as they arise and account for how funding has been used.
IASER only launched in July 2026, and we're still establishing our fundraising arrangements.
So far, much of our work has been carried out by volunteers and founding members, using their existing time and resources.
We're approaching potential donors and preparing funding proposals, but we're distinguishing these discussions from money actually committed.
We want this grant to help us move from relying almost entirely on voluntary contributions to having enough consistent support to deliver our projects and maintain them.
Confirmed funding received from other sources: IASER officially launched in July 2026, so we're still in the early stages of fundraising.
Most of what we've achieved so far has relied on volunteers and work developed by our founding team.
We've grown to over 100 members and are now approaching potential funders to help us support and expand this work.
We're developing funding proposals and donor relationships, but we won't count applications or informal discussions as money raised.
We'll update our fundraising figures as commitments are confirmed.
This campaign is an important step towards giving IASER the people and resources needed to move beyond volunteer-led work and become a more sustainable organisation.