International Institute Of Islamic Thought

IIIT (Herndon, VA; EIN 23-2202414) operates two distinct giving tracks, and applicants need to identify which one fits before writing anything. The first is a scholar-facing research grants program — Short-Term Research Grants (travel, fieldwork, dissemination costs) and Long-Term Research Grants (up to $25,000 over a two-year period, disbursed in stages against progress reports, culminating in a book-length manuscript). This track is explicitly open to unsolicited applications submitted to grants@iiit.org, with no published deadline (applications appear to be accepted on a rolling basis). The second track is organizational grantmaking to allied nonprofits — IRS filings show 17 grants totaling $6,329,000 across the 2022-2023 filing years, with a median award of $20,000 but a small number of large outlier grants (notably a recurring $3,000,000 award to York Foundation) that dominate the total dollar figure. First-time individual applicants should expect to compete in the $5,000-$25,000 band, not the $3M outlier band, which likely reflects a strategic or affiliated relationship rather than a competitive open call. IIIT strongly favors proposals anchored in its named priority areas — epistemology and decolonization of knowledge, integration of knowledge (IOK) frameworks, renewal of Islamic thought, Maqāsid al-Sharī'ah, Islamic psychology, and reform of Islamic education — over generalist Islamic-studies topics. Given the Institute's own program set (AEMS empirical education research, The Fairfax Institute's IOK training, and its 650+ volume publishing arm), reviewers appear to value work that can plausibly feed into a publication, course, or policy output, not standalone academic research with no dissemination plan. With total assets of only ~$1.03M against ~$13.8M in FY2024 revenue, IIIT is fundamentally a pass-through grantmaker funded by current-year contributions rather than an endowed foundation — giving capacity in any cycle depends on that year's donor base, so early outreach to gauge appetite is more valuable here than with an endowed peer.

IIIT's individual research grants run $2,500-$25,000 (per the Institute's own typical-grant-size disclosure), consistent with the Long-Term Research Grant cap of $25,000 over a two-year term. Its broader organizational grants, per 2022-2023 Form 990 data, totaled $6,329,000 across 17 awards with a median of $20,000 (the 2023 filing year alone had a $17,000 median) and a stated full range of $5,000 to $3,000,000. That $3,000,000 figure — awarded in both 2022 and 2023 to York Foundation, a Herndon, VA-based entity — is a clear outlier that inflates the mean well above the median; excluding it, the remaining ~16 grants cluster between $5,000 and $75,000 (e.g., Council on American Islamic Relations, $75,000; Diyanet Center of America, $50,000; Islamic Society of North America, $24,000-$35,000; Al Faith Academy, $20,000-$25,000). Financially, IIIT's revenue has swung sharply year over year: $16,355,779 (FY2022) to $8,955,918 (FY2023, a deficit year with expenses of $9,918,350) to $13,846,067 (FY2024, expenses $13,090,298, net income +$755,769). Contributions make up 99.7% of revenue, meaning grant output tracks fundraising, not investment returns — total assets sit at just $1,032,989, so there is no meaningful endowment cushion. Charitable disbursements consumed 59.4% of FY2024 expenses (~$7,776,217), with no officer compensation reported, indicating a lean, volunteer/low-overhead governance structure. Geographically, giving concentrates in Virginia and the DC-Maryland-Virginia corridor (Herndon, Lanham, MD) with additional grants to Oklahoma and Connecticut-based Islamic organizations; programmatically, funding splits between direct research grants to individual scholars and larger institutional grants to allied Islamic educational and civic organizations.

IIIT's closest asset-size peers in this dataset are all small, single-state education foundations with roughly $1.03M in assets — but none publish a comparable open research-grants program, and none appear to have a public website, which itself is a meaningful differentiator.

The peer set is asset-matched almost to the dollar (~$1.03M each) but functionally very different from IIIT: these are small family/community foundations with no public website, no disclosed grant range, and presumably narrow, locally-invited giving (typical of trusts this size). IIIT, by contrast, moves far more money relative to its balance sheet — it operates as a pass-through of ~$13-16M in annual contributions rather than an endowed grantmaker — and is unusual among this peer group in publishing a named, unsolicited application process and specific research priorities. Applicants should not expect IIIT to behave like a typical $1M-asset family foundation; its real financial profile resembles a mid-sized operating nonprofit with a grants line, not a small private foundation.

IIIT's most concrete near-term opportunity is the 2026 ISLA Research Symposium (April 25-26, 2026, online), for which the Institute issued an open call for proposals covering K-12 Islamic education research — a good entry point for researchers who are not yet ready for the larger two-year Long-Term Research Grant commitment. In parallel, IIIT is co-organizing the 2026 International Conference on Knowledge Integration and Educational Leadership (ICKIEL) in Bangladesh, signaling continued investment in its Integration of Knowledge (IOK) framework as an international convening topic, not just a domestic publishing line. On the publishing side, the Institute released "Islamic Legal Methodology: A New Perspective On Uṣūl Al-Fiqh" by Ahmad Kazemi-Moussavi and Hamid Mavani, continuing its 650+ volume catalog (now including an expanded IIITBooks App with audiobook and ePub formats and 230+ English titles distributed across 18 academic platforms) — evidence that funded/authored research reliably converts into a distributed publication, which is a strong signal for applicants building a dissemination plan into their proposals. The Institute also published memorials for two significant figures in its network: Professor John L. Esposito, the Georgetown scholar of Islam and interfaith dialogue, and Dr. M. Yaqub Mirza, described by IIIT as a longtime scholar and community leader — both losses to watch for potential shifts in IIIT's academic advisory relationships, though no leadership or governance changes at IIIT itself were identified in this research. Financially, FY2024 marked a rebound year (revenue $13.85M, net income +$755,769) after a FY2023 deficit (revenue $8.96M against $9.92M in expenses), which is worth factoring into timing: an applicant approaching IIIT in a strong fundraising year may find more capacity than one approaching immediately after a deficit year.

Address proposals to grants@iiit.org and use IIIT's own priority-topic language directly in the proposal's framing — the Institute names epistemology and decolonization of knowledge, integration-of-knowledge (IOK) frameworks, renewal of Islamic thought, Maqāsid al-Sharī'ah, Islamic psychology and spirituality, and reform of Islamic education as its stated research interests; proposals that map explicitly onto one of these named areas will read as a stronger fit than broad "Islamic studies" submissions. Choose the right instrument: Short-Term Research Grants suit discrete costs (travel, fieldwork, dissemination) and are the lower-commitment option, while Long-Term Research Grants (up to $25,000, two-year term) require a book-length manuscript as the deliverable and should only be pursued if the applicant can commit to periodic progress reporting — funds are released in stages tied to those reports, with the final tranche held until manuscript delivery, so cash-flow planning matters as much as the research plan itself. Because IIIT's own output is overwhelmingly published scholarship (650+ volumes, an expanding books app, academic symposia), proposals should explicitly state a publication or dissemination pathway rather than treating research as a standalone product. Given IIIT's real financial profile — a thin ~$1.03M asset base funded almost entirely (99.7%) by current-year contributions that swung from $16.4M to $8.96M to $13.8M across FY2022-FY2024 — timing outreach around a strong fundraising year, and building in flexibility on award size, is more realistic than assuming a fixed annual grants budget. A common mistake to avoid: assuming IIIT's headline organizational grant figures ($3,000,000 to York Foundation in both 2022 and 2023) represent an achievable target for a first-time individual applicant; that award almost certainly reflects an affiliated or strategic relationship, not the open competitive pool, which realistically runs $5,000-$25,000 per the Institute's own typical-grant-size disclosure. Finally, use live convening opportunities like the 2026 ISLA Research Symposium (April 25-26, 2026) as a lower-friction way to build a relationship with IIIT's program staff before submitting a full Long-Term Research Grant application.