My Nonprofit Journey: Moustafa Elshaabiny

My name is Moustafa Elshaabiny, and I have been with Charity Navigator for four years. I serve as a Senior Software Engineer on our small, yet mighty, engineering team. One of my favorite parts about my role is that I get to wear different hats and work on many different projects that are at the core of Charity Navigator’s strategic goals. My focus is primarily on our technological infrastructure and data-driven tools that power our ratings, website, and internal program operations. 

I like to think of myself as a software engineer with an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for social good. My interest in the social sector was sparked from having lived in Egypt through the Arab Spring revolution and witnessing how the power of people can influence social change. I immigrated to the US and initially studied Electrical Engineering at the City College of New York. After an introduction to a programming course, I quickly decided to switch majors to Computer Science, as I viewed it as a versatile tool that allows me to tackle a wide range of areas that I am interested in. 

In college, my interest in the public sector only grew. I was a fellow at the Colin Powell Leadership and Public Service program and presided over a chapter of the Roosevelt Institute public policy think tank. My professional career took me from working on a Data Mining project in Germany, to founding an Education Technology startup helping K-12 teachers in underrepresented school districts discover curated field trips, to where I am today serving the constituents of not only Charity Navigator, but the hundreds of thousands of nonprofits we rate in America.

The passion that donors who come to our website show on a daily basis is the fuel, seconded only by coffee, that derives my creativity. One of my proudest accomplishments during my time here is helping in the technology migration that was instrumental in the launch of our Encompass Ratings System, which increased Charity Navigator’s evaluation capacity by more than twenty fold. This migration was also a vehicle that drove an explorative and iterative approach to tackle one of our main organizational goals: to increase the breadth and depth of our ratings. 

I am an avid learner and have a lesser-known passion for teaching. On some evenings, I assist in online coding university classrooms and find great joy in introducing students to programming principles. My first passion, however, was completely not tech-related; as a kid, I always wanted to become a soccer player. Stay tuned for my soccer career updates...

Written by Moustafa Elshaabiny, Senior Software Engineer at Charity Navigator.