Masjid al-Ansar Food Pantry

Masjid al-Ansar’s Food Pantry started with a locked door and a line of people who had nowhere else to go.

Around 2017, Malika Abdurrahman arrived at the masjid and found families waiting outside with no food and no one to help. The pantry had been unmanaged. She stepped in and ran it herself. It was a one-family operation from day one.

Alhamdulillah, word spread. The pantry grew. During COVID-19, it served close to 300 families a month. Today, it serves about 200 families every month. It is a steady community lifeline run entirely by volunteers out of a masjid.

But growth brought pressure. More families needed help, and the capacity to serve them had not grown with them. Funding shortages and a thin volunteer team forced distributions down to once a month. Malika wanted to turn the pantry into a fully structured, sustainable food bank. She did not yet have a clear path to get there.

THE CHALLENGE

The pantry was running on goodwill and spreadsheets.

All donor and distribution data lived in Excel. The board was made up largely of advisors. They offered ideas and encouragement, but the hands-on work still fell on a small core team. Malika knew she needed to hire. She assumed the first hire would be someone to handle logistics and deliveries.

Funding was the deeper problem. Without a fundraising plan, every decision was constrained. There was no way to hire. There was no way to expand distributions. There was no path toward the food bank she envisioned. The pantry had reached the ceiling that every volunteer-run community organization eventually hits.

Malika connected with Oaktree Institute through Rami Kawas, from a prior working relationship. She came looking for organizational guidance. What she found was a clearer picture of what actually needed to happen first.

OUR APPROACH

Oaktree Institute worked with Masjid al-Ansar’s Food Pantry through a series of organizational restructuring and fund development sessions led by Oaktree Fund Development Specialist Nadeem Riaz. The engagement has spanned three main sessions with ongoing advisory support.

In the first session, Nadeem walked Malika through the real sequence of decisions ahead. Malika had planned to hire someone for logistics. Nadeem helped her see that every function she wanted to build required funding first. Deliveries. Volunteer coordination. Expanded distributions. None of it moves without someone owning the funding side.

“That’s when I realized my first hire should be a fund development coordinator,” Malika said. “All of those things require funding. Having someone own funding makes everything move. I had never considered that before.”

That was the turning point.

From there, the work became concrete. Oaktree helped Masjid al-Ansar’s Food Pantry:

• Move off Excel and into a real CRM.
• Update their website to support a Google Grants application for advertising.
• Build a step-by-step plan for their first fundraising dinner, set for November 7.
• Connect with fundraising contacts who could open new doors.

At every step, Oaktree followed up. “It felt like working with a knowledgeable team member,” Malika said. “Somebody that could help me guide my steps, so I’m not wasting time and energy. Very professional, easy, with constant communication and step-by-step follow-up.”

THE IMPACT

Masjid al-Ansar Food Pantry now knows what its first hire needs to accomplish. That clarity alone changes how every decision after it gets made.

Before this engagement, the pantry had no fundraising plan. No CRM. No roadmap for a first major event. Now Malika is preparing for a fundraising dinner. She has a donor database she can actually use. And her website is positioned to qualify for Google Grants advertising support.

The pantry is not yet a food bank. That is still the goal. But the organization now has the infrastructure and the direction to get there. The work is no longer improvised.

LOOKING AHEAD

Masjid al-Ansar’s Food Pantry’s next phase of work includes expanding the board into a working team rather than an advisory group, and continuing fund development and board strategy sessions through Oaktree Institute.

We are honored to walk alongside Malika and the Masjid al-Ansar Food Pantry team as they build something durable for their community. What they have built as volunteers is already remarkable. What they are building next is a strong institution.

If your organization is at a similar moment, Oaktree Institute is here to help you find the right next step. When the mission is clear, but the structure needs to catch up, that is exactly the work we do. Reach out and let’s begin the conversation.