Through the Jeel Fund, Impact Lebanon Charity aims to build a long-term sustainable solution to support students seeking higher education in Lebanon.
Our story
Impact Lebanon Charity (ILC) was founded in November 2020 in the UK.
The founding team setup ILC as a charity, registered and regulated by the UK Charity Commission, a non-ministerial department, for England and Wales, that ensures the public can support charities with confidence.
Note: We are aware of the fact that our name is similar to another non-profit: Impact Lebanon Limited. Although Impact Lebanon Charity and Impact Lebanon Limited have common roots they are today two separate legal entities, each fully independent, and with a clear separation in their governance structure, their financing and their leadership.
Our ILC team has been working on building a strong foundation since 2021 to shape its program, grow its donors and ultimately its impact.
Here are some of our growth milestones:
Our Milestones
Why The Jeel Fund?
The fundraising model
The Jeel Fund is Impact Lebanon Charity’s first fundraising initiative. It aims to rely largely on smaller recurring monthly donations, complemented by occasional larger one-off donations. This mass model requires engagement from a large base of donors, which we believe is more sustainable in the long term, and in line with our aspirations to knit a tight diaspora community around one of Lebanon’s most pressing needs.
We plan to make sure that over time no more than 5% of donations received may be used for transactions costs and admin purposes by Impact Lebanon Charity. We keep costs low by having an all-volunteer, virtual team.
The disbursement model
We will make our disbursements to universities along the lines of a two-pronged approach:
- Over time, we will disburse part of the funds raised (our target is 50%) to fund undergraduate scholarships every academic year to our selected universities: The American University of Beirut (AUB), the Lebanese American University (LAU) and L’Université Saint Joseph de Beyrouth. Read more about our eligibility criteria.
- WE will use the balance of donations received to build an endowment that we hope will enable us to grow our capabilities and build a long term mechanism to continue to support education in Lebanon. Impact Lebanon Charity will invest the amounts we place in our endowment in a mixture of asset classes which will be managed by a team of volunteer financiers. In other words, if you setup a recurring donation with us, you will be serving Lebanon in the short and long term.
The beneficiaries profile
We aim to take an analytical, comprehensive, and fair approach to selecting our beneficiaries, across both selected students and supported institutions. In 2021, we completed a market assessment of the education landscape in Lebanon, supported pro-bono by a leading global consultancy. This helped us setup a clear set of criteria to help select the students who will receive our support through scholarships. You can view those criteria here. We will work solely through our partner universities, and will not be receiving direct applications from students. We aim to continue to update and refresh our understanding of this landscape to ensure that the funding is used to deliver the best possible impact.