Raising funds and building the Islamic Relief family

Our supporters – mosques, partners, volunteers and charities – came together to raise funds and support our long-term projects and emergency appeals both within the UK and globally. We saw their support through engagement with activities, events, challenges and campaigns from London to Scotland.

Community fundraising, powered by our local partners and volunteers, reached new heights in 2025, with six international challenges. Some 200 participants from all over the world came together across three challenges: the Bosnia Marathon, cycling between Mecca and Medina, and hiking across glaciers in northern Pakistan. These activities raised money to improve access to water, support orphaned children in Albania, and provide life-saving aid to Gaza. Together, these challenges raised a whopping total of £270,000.

Similarly, our masjid engagements during Ramadan saw an active increase of approximately 40 per cent compared to Ramadan 2024, raising £900,000 across the country in just one month. Throughout the course of the year, the London and South team carried out over 100 mosque collections, which raised an outstanding £1,000,000 – a proportion of which contributed to the Ramadan totals. These achievements not only support the causes we champion but also strengthened our relationships and partnerships with these mosques and local communities.

Each Ramadan, our Cake Campaign brings smiles to the faces of supporters and their families as volunteers deliver cakes to homes throughout the country to raise funds for our humanitarian work in Syria. In 2025, we sold more than 31,500 cakes and over 4,300 pistachio chocolate bars – a new option for 2025.

Volunteers remained at the heart of our work, especially during Ramadan. Their commitment, hard work and dedication ensured that we raised essential funds to support vulnerable families around the world. In Ramadan 2025 our Do it for the Cause campaign engaged volunteers around the country through peer-to-peer fundraising, raising more than £320,000 for various causes such as supporting new mothers in Gaza, rebuilding homes in Syria, and improving access to clean water in South Asia and Africa.

Throughout 2025 the hard work, dedication and drive of the Islamic Relief UK team continued to draw in new audiences and build trust with our supporters. The year began with a special exhibition stall at the Buckingham Palace Humanitarian Reception hosted by Their Majesties The King and Queen. The reception was attended by invited guests, including Islamic Relief staff, members of the Board of Trustees and key volunteers and stakeholders. The reception was an opportunity to honour our attendees’ contribution to our organisation.

His Majesty The King recognised Islamic Relief’s significant contribution to the British charity sector and paid tribute to women from around the world empowered to improve their quality of life with support from Islamic Relief. HM The King was presented with a gift of olive oil from Hanan, a woman supported by Islamic Relief. Our work was also recognised by the Charity Times Awards, which shortlisted Islamic Relief UK for the Charity of the Year Award in September.

Throughout the year, our trusted donors in the British Muslim community remained the backbone of all that we do, continuing to demonstrate their generous support for our long-term development work, as well as responding to emergency appeals including for Pakistan, Myanmar, Gaza and Sudan.

Across the UK, communities have been stretched even further as the cost-of-living crisis continued and it became increasingly difficult for families to meet their basic needs. Our domestic programmes sought to build resilience to poverty, empower women and girls, encourage youth development, and support refugees and asylum seekers.

In summer 2025, our food drive provided over 7,600 kg of qurbani meat to communities across the UK. We also distributed more than 8,500 food packs reaching an estimated 26,131 people through our 38 partners. We also distributed some 2,900 Eid gifts to children from refugee and vulnerable families.

In 2025, our winter food drive coincided with Ramadan, during which we distributed 7,300 food packs, reaching over 21,000 people. We also provided 4,800 iftar meals and supported over 2,700 children with Eid gifts, bringing the total number of people reached to more than 36,000 through partnerships with 35 organisations.

Sudan continued to face unprecedented violence and humanitarian crisis in 2025 but received little attention from the global media and international community. We began 2025 with renewed commitment to advocate for Sudan in parliament and raise awareness among the British Muslim community and the UK government. Engagement with the Scottish government also continued to go from strength to strength, and saw us secure funding for our Sudan programmes from its Humanitarian Emergency Fund.

The year ended with our Are Your Eyes on Sudan? campaign that featured panel talks, a pop-up shop showcasing the work of Sudanese artists and artisans, and other events to engage with the Sudanese diaspora, activists, media personalities and UK policymakers to call for dialogue and peacebuilding in the country.

Alongside Sudan, we continued to raise the need for a sustained UK Government response to Gaza. Our petition to the UK government on Gaza garnered tens of thousands of signatures and reached millions of people across social media. In collaboration with influencer Grillo Medina, our reel highlighting the petition reached three million views.

Our ability to strengthen our advocacy work with our supporters and continue to reach government has been strengthened by our faith-based approach. Leaning into the unique value of our faith led understanding, we had the opportunity to bring this conversation to light throughout our advocacy work, including at a key reception at the Labour Party Conference where our UK Director discussed this key area of development with Minister Baroness Chapman.

In September, Islamic Relief and Qatar Charity signed a groundbreaking three-year agreement to deliver humanitarian aid, build sustainable livelihoods, and address the root causes of poverty and conflict worldwide.

The $15-million Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) expands the long-standing collaboration between the charities, which now work together on four main areas: development programming, humanitarian response, localisation and research.

The MoU also aims to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including zero hunger, good health and wellbeing, decent work and economic growth, and reduced inequalities.

Throughout 2025, our lasting partnership with various UN agencies enabled us to continue saving and transforming lives around the world. Together with the WFP, we provided hot meals, food packs and cash to families in Gaza and Sudan. Through our partnership with UNICEF, we supported girls in rural Pakistan to stay in school and provided warm clothing, blankets, mattresses and shoes to orphaned children in Gaza. In Kenya, we worked with UNAIDS and local faith leaders to tackle the stigma and misinformation that remain major obstacles to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In January, Islamic Relief signed a letter of intent with the Anticipation Hub, a platform facilitating knowledge exchange, learning, guidance, and advocacy around anticipatory action. Anticipatory action means acting ahead of a predicted hazardous event to prevent or reduce its impact on lives, livelihoods and humanitarian needs before the event fully unfolds.

For Islamic Relief, this collaboration further cements our prioritisation of anticipatory action in emergency preparedness and response programming. As part of the anticipatory action community, we will greatly benefit from the exchange of knowledge and learning from individuals and organisations.