About
A collective built for this life and the next.
The Garden brings together two things the Muslim charity sector usually keeps apart: the people who raise the money, and the people who get it to the ground. We hold both, so a pound can be followed from the donor to the place it lands.
We work to Islamic principles - accountability, intention, transparency, and the long view. Those are not decoration. They are how we decide what to build and how to build it.
How this started
For years, the people raising the money and the people delivering on the ground barely spoke to each other. Donors gave generously, and somewhere between the appeal and the field, accountability slipped. We built The Garden to close that gap - to raise the money and follow it all the way through, under one roof.
Why “The Garden”
A garden is a verb before it is a place. You plant, you tend, you wait, and you trust that what you put in grows into something you may never fully see yourself.
And it is a destination. Al-Jannah, the Garden, is what all of this is for. The way we build here should reflect where we are trying to go.
Built to outlast its founders
The Muslim sector builds too many organisations that depend entirely on the person who started them. We are building the opposite: people, systems and standards that compound over time, so the work holds long after any one of us steps away. We are planting a tree, and we expect it to be here long after us.
The team
Irfan Akram
Founder
Twenty years building digital fundraising for some of the best-known Muslim charities in the UK, at his peak running campaigns that raised tens of millions a year. The Garden is the next step: raise the funds, get them to the ground, and serve the community across its giving.
Riaz Hussain
Operations & technology
A decade in brand and product for international names, then another in Muslim digital marketing. He leads operations and technology across the group, from campaign infrastructure to new builds. A father of four.
Humza Aslam
Intelligence & growth
Eight years building AI systems for research, targeting and outreach at scale. He works on giving charities the end-to-end visibility the split between fundraising and delivery has denied them for years.
Saima Akram
Finance Director
Fifteen years running complex, multi-million pound programmes across the corporate sector. As Finance Director she oversees governance, compliance and financial strategy across the group.