To advance equality and justice for American Muslim organizations and individuals by promoting legal compliance and protecting their rights in matters concerning national security law.

An America in which constitutional rights and liberties are upheld equally for all, regardless of ethnicity, religion, or cultural heritage.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Strengthen & Protect the Muslim Nonprofit Commmunity by providing nonprofit legal audits, leadership training on issues related to governance, risk, compliance through our legal clinic and research.

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Goal Two: Prevent the Unwarranted Indictment of American Muslim Individuals and Organizations. Decrease the number American Muslim organizations & individuals adversely impacted under the guise of security.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Three: Increase Reach & Effect of Impact Litigation: Demonstrated record of challenging the lack of due process and unfair administration of extreme vetting and guilt by association policies.

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Describe an investment in leadership

Yes. MLFA is committed to developing leaders within our organization and within the American Musilm community. All of our attorneys have CLE courses they participate in on an annual basis. MLFA's CEO also completed her MA in philanthropic studies from Indiana University's Lilly School of Philanthropy and completed an exclusive fellowship in Muslim Philanthropy over the past 18 months to ensure she is leading with excellence. Furthermore, in 2022 MLFA created a training and development department to ensure that our culture moving forward is one of leadership development and mission impact; this program is led by a dedicated manager. Showcasing our commitment to leadership development, in 2021, MLFA launched the Tarek Al Kadri Social Justice & Leadership endowed scholarship. So far we have supported two Muslim scholars studying and working in fields of law, legal studies, and human rights. With this program our goal is to improve negative portrayals of Muslims in America.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

• Policy Advocacy

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

MLFA is deeply rooted in the grassroots American Muslim community. As a national organization we make an effort to visit as many states as we can with our mission. We partner with local organizations and leaders to engage different sectors of any given local community. We ensure to attend 4-5 national conferences annually in order to share our mission with new networks, meet leaders to stay relative and aligned on the needs of our community. We host free legal clinics, run workshops, host dinners and lead nonprofit leadership boot camps to ensure that our mission and message are reaching varied audiences and that we are adding value everywhere we go. In 2020, we partnered with Indiana University and launched a Legal Clinic, Research and Training arm for MLFA. In 2022 we launched a book club and we defined three pillars of our organization - Defend, Protect and Educate. In 2023, we hired a brand specialist and social media team to open our mission to new markets and build our brand.

The Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) was founded in 2001 by a coalition of civil rights activists seeking to redress systemic discrimination against American Muslims. The tragic terrorist attacks of 9/11 caused a surge in discrimination, hate crimes, and unlawful profiling by both the public and private sectors. Immediately following the terrorist attacks, law enforcement questioned Muslims en masse about their constitutionally protected rights of free speech, association, and religion. Islamophobia dominated politics and the media, affecting Muslims from the classroom to the courtroom. MLFA was a grassroots event based organization prior to the Pandemic and therefore has been in a transformative state since. The courtrooms did not close but offices did. MLFA needed to emerge and ensure that our clients' needs were being met and we found new ways to engage our community. MLFA did get smaller to preserve our resources and in doing so we took the time to reimagine ways we could continue to serve the most vulnerable in our community. We have successfully transformed our organization so we can now pivot and respond to external changes in society. We have worked on diversifying our funding model, our leadership and program model all to be able to ensure that our mission is at the forefront of what we do. MLFA is the only federal legal defense fund in the American Muslim Legal ecosystem so we know that staying relative and accessible and fluid is essential for us. MLFA built partnerships and worked on a three year collaboration initiative which led to a grant win of $200,000 allowing us the opportunity to use technology to improve our social justice initiatives. As we develop our resource and referral database we will be able to provide the growing number of people reaching out to our office for support access to the legal resources they seek. We also redesigned our website as a resource hub again responding to increasing needs and limited resources.