The operating model

How qardon.org covers what it needs to operate.

qardon.org is the registrar — it keeps the record of what every member has given and moves money only on the member's own instruction. It never holds your money and never takes a cut of it. Your money stays in your own account, in your own name:

• 0% on what you give. What you commit goes in whole. Nothing is skimmed off the top.
• 0% on what a borrower receives. An approved borrower receives the full amount — nothing in between can resemble interest. The borrower pays only a one-time validation fee covering the credit-check and verification work on their own application.
• No monthly fee to give. Members are never charged a subscription for giving.

Operations run on a cost-recovery basis. The platform's real running costs are recovered from the yield the halal investment earns — actual cost, not a fixed percentage and not a fixed commission. Whatever yield is left over after costs funds Recovery and grows the member's own position. There is no profit target: the platform recovers what it costs to run, and everything beyond that serves the community — recovering people from calamity, helping members become financially independent, and caring for the elderly.

Three-vehicle halal portfolio — every member's investment in their own name.

The pool principal is preserved and never spent. It is invested halal in each member's own account, managed by an Investment Committee with independent religious-ethics oversight:

• Halal stocks — AI-screened daily against AAOIFI-aligned criteria; every trade approved by a human Investment Committee member before execution.
• Digital assets approved by the religious-ethics oversight board — dormant until the board issues written approval of specific instruments and strategies. Until then, allocation is zero.
• Small-business equity investments — direct profit-share partnerships with halal entrepreneurs the community is building, structured per established Islamic-finance partnership standards.

The yield from these investments — after the platform's real operating costs are recovered on a cost-recovery basis — funds Recovery, Karam, and the member's own growing position. The principal stays whole.

Karam loans, backed by the senior's own home.

When a senior chooses, freely and after care has already been provided, to endow their home as part of their pool contribution, the pool can fund a Karam loan backed by that home. The home is the collateral; on eventual liquidation, principal returns to the pool. This is one of the ways the platform supports its own senior-care work without ever touching the members' principal.

What Fotoh extends free to the community.

qardon.org is the registrar that makes interest-free giving and lending work — it never holds the money or runs a pool. Beyond the registry, Fotoh, Inc. — the company behind qardon.org — funds the software the community needs and gifts it free to the institutions and people who serve the community. Examples:

• MMS — a full management system for community institutions (financials, events, congregation directory). Gifted free, forever.
• Live Athan — a free app to hear the call to prayer and pray on time. Always free, never for profit.
• Partner widget — embeddable giving widget any community institution can drop into their own website. No fee.

All of this is funded by Fotoh, Inc. from its for-profit products — the marketplace, the store, and more. qardon.org itself takes nothing but the cost of running it.

How Recovery is funded.

Recovery payouts come from investment yield on the pool — NOT from the principal. The principal is preserved. Recovery is calamity aid, NOT a commercial coverage product. There are no monthly charges, no middlemen, no risk-pricing in the actuarial sense, no fine-print exclusions, no claim adjusters.

When a member files a claim, the Qardon Review Panel verifies the calamity (police report, medical records, repair estimate). The Panel is staffed by specialists across medicine, finance, law, fiqh, fraud detection, and documentation; every claim is reviewed across all six fields, and a written decision explaining the outcome is delivered to the claimant — full transparency on how the call was made. Approved claims are paid from the Recovery Fund, subject to fund availability — payouts may be full or partial.

Independent board + religious-ethics oversight + annual audit.

Qardon.org is governed by an independent Board of Trustees. A separate Sharia Supervisory Board approves the halal investment policy, ratifies every individual instrument class, and oversees lending compliance. An Audit Committee oversees the annual independent CPA audit, and audited financials are published openly.

Qardon.org operates entirely separately from any community institution's accounts. Money never sits inside a partner institution; partner institutions help us reach members, but they don't hold funds for us.