By: Beth Amato
Old Mutual Wealth and Gift of the Givers have partnered to form the Gift of the Givers Life Fund to grow private wealth and feed money into humanitarian crises.
“This is an opportunity to channel investment into much-needed disaster relief and allow Gift of the Givers to do their amazing work in over 50 countries," said Tags Moodley, Old Mutual Wealth’s Business Development Executive at the fund’s launch.
The Old Mutual Albaraka Income Fund underpins the Gift of the Givers Life Fund, which has grown to R1.6 billion since its inception in March 2020.
Portfolio manager Maahir Jakoet explains that the fund is a Shari’ah-compliant, multi-asset income fund offering access to local and international asset classes. It offers investors an ethical investment vehicle with a low-to-moderate risk profile. Shari’ah-compliant investment funds adhere to Islamic law and do not invest in companies that derive a majority of their income from products or services like alcohol, pork and gambling.
Gift of the Givers director and founder Imtiaz Sooliman spoke at the launch of the fund and said that the Gift of the Givers Life Fund was the only fund in the history of the world that encompasses spirituality. He explained that wealth follows through people and not by them and that the purpose of money is to serve the greater good from the heart.
“We see that corporations and governments don’t have enough money to fix everything. Neither do taxpayers. We also know that support can’t come without more money. A fund like this will help significantly. It will have a ripple effect too and will ultimately feed back into the economy,” said Dr Sooliman.
He said that Gift of the Givers received its first corporate funding in 2017 after it managed a sizeable Knysna fire disaster relief effort in the Western Cape.
“We sent in a team of our own firefighters. We deployed engineers to figure out how to ensure water was available. We dug boreholes. We needed fodder for livestock. We fed people, dogs, and cats. The corporate world noticed us and began investing,” he said.
Sooliman listed the organisation’s achievements, including supplying emergency water to Makhanda, in the Eastern Cape in 2018, when a devastating drought hit the region.
“If Gift of the Givers didn’t intervene, Rhodes University (in Makhanda) would have lost many of its students, and the whole town would have lost much of its business. It would have been a disaster,” he said.
Gift of the Givers director of operations Muhammad Rayhaan Sooliman said that the organisation had a long-standing relationship with Old Mutual Wealth and wanted ways to scale the funds needed to respond to disaster situations adequately. “There are so many people who depend on our help. We needed an innovative solution.”
Jakoet said the fund was ready to go mainstream. “We don’t want to sell yet another product or fund to people. We want to sell a better South Africa. We want to sell the fact that it’s going to take a collective effort to make this country work.”
Bessika Coeztee, Old Mutual Wealth’s head of product, said the income earned from the fund will be distributed and then donated to Gift of the Givers every quarter. It is a three-year minimum investment period with tax-deductible benefits.
Meanwhile, in his Budget Speech in February this year, Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana spoke of the government's desire to respond better to disasters in the country.
PERSONAL FINANCE