Case study : Enhanced Collaboration Scale Between Academic

Institutions and Amil Zakat Organization on MBKM's Internship for

Islamic Economy College Students in Laznas LMI

Citra Widuri1
Forum Zakat, Jakarta, Indonesia, email: citra99widuri@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
In this case study, the author explains how collaboration between the university
(Airlangga University's Islamic Economy Studies of Economy & Business Faculty)
and an amil zakat organization (Laznas LMI) is structured in the implementation of
MBKM2 internship program, which leads to certain benefit. The author focuses on
efforts to examine and synchronize two separate business processes to satisfy the
interests of maqasid sharia from both collaborators, rather than ministry rules
connected to the internship program. Using a case study approach and portfolio
review, it decomposed every theme in a tabulated analysis. The principle of
scalability is also applied to select the most influencing factors. As the results,
successful collaboration is influenced by key factors such as leadership, competency
and learning methodologies mastery, as well as actors' comprehension of the crucial
components in the Islamic social finance ecosystem. The whole approach differs
from what is already being done by internship providers and their campus partners.
The uniqueness may be observed in the following method and its results.
Keywords : Islamic social finance, collaboration, scalability, internship, Unair, Laznas
LMI, MBKM.

1
Citra Widuri is Director of Mobilization, Research, and Transformation at a nation scale amil zakat
organization, Laznas LMI . She is also the Head of Division IV: Innovation at Forum Zakat (FOZ),
which is Indonesia's Association for Zakat Management Organizations. The author is qualified both as
Expert Amil by BNSP and an assessor within LSP Keuangan Syariah/ Professional Certification Body
for Sharia Finances..
The author wishes to convey her gratitude to all of the relevant experts, as well as the committee for
The Strategic Capabilities Development for Sharia Economic and Finance Leaders Training: Towards
An Impactful Islamic Social Finance, which was carried out online, in collaboration between the BI
Institute and UII on 26 – 30 July 2021.
The author's conclusions, thoughts, and views contained in this paper are solely those of the author
and do not represent the official views of Laznas LMI or Forum Zakat.
2
Independent Learning Independent Campus, an approach from Ministry of Education for college
students in Indonesia. Consisting 8 activities, and each of them allows students to collect up to 20
credit semester units from outside their respective universities.

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I. Introduction

Amil Zakat Organization in Indonesia established as part of social -

humanitarian organization’s type. The community who build this organization is

having a strong root from activism. This inevitable connection in Laznas LMI can be

seen from the track record of 8 leaders over a span of 25 years, are former youth

activists . Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct, or intervene in

social, political, economic, legal, or environmental reform with the desire to make

changes in society toward a perceived greater good (wikipedia).

For the last 2 decades Laznas LMI has always been open to establishing

relationships with campus entities. Be it with student organizations for various social

activities, or personally with students for academic research and internship

purposes. In such a long period of time, there is a tendency that the parts who get

the maximum benefit are students, namely that their various academic requirements

are met and they can graduate. Meanwhile, in terms of Laznas LMI as a provider of

internship and research facilities, the benefits obtained are not significant.

When the zakat management regulation was published and made mandatory

in 2016, we began to look back at our management practices and progressively

improve them in accordance with Islamic Social Finance's principles and approach.

Strategic management, risk management, financial literacy, maqashid sharia,

organization development and sustainable development goals are few of our new

concern in managing islamic social fund. From 2016 to 2020 our funds collection is

improving gradually 30% per year. The first semester of 2021 we raised 54 billion

rupiah, which is much higher than the collection throughout 2019. We now have a

greater understanding of how to enhance productivity in every activity. Within

MBKM’s internship, we are no longer operated by activist’s perspective to provide

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internships only, but also as a professional organization that requires collaboration

with a larger ecosystem.

Problem Statement

In a typical internship, a group or individual college student internship is

carried out according to casual needs of the job in a very short time, maximum 3

months and the students only reporting to gain 0 – 4 credit semester units. While

MBKM’s internship required an integrated approach to provide matching learning

outcomes for minimum 20 credit semester unit in a semester. This is an opportunity

to examine and synchronize two separate business processes from both university

as the academic institution and amil zakat organization as professional institution.

The process is collaborative and the result should be scalable.

Research Questions

In order to describe enhanced collaboration scale between academic

institutions and amil zakat organization on MBKM's internship for islamic economy

college students in Laznas LMI, the study aims to address the following research

issues:

1. How do actors operate the collaboration process to perceived fruitful results?

2. What are the main influences for the collaboration can be said enhanced and

scalable?

II. Literature Review

The key three problems in comprehending this study are discussed in this

part. Collaboration and scalability, internships, and Islamic social finance are among

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them. Since I want to examine these three parts simultaneously, these are

considered the research's "essence".

Collaboration and Scalability

Collaboration is a mutual engagement among several participants in their

coordinated effort, aimed at solving a problem together (Lai, 2011). This

collaborative interaction is characterized by shared and common goals, symmetric

structures, a high level of negotiation, interactivity, and interdependence. Roschelle

(1992; in Lai, 2011) mentions the framework of collaboration. Collaboration is a

process taking place in a convergence or construction of shared and common goals.

Collaboration is required to develop understanding through sharing ideas and

information among various parties, and proposing a solution mechanism to an

uncertainty. Boyer-Kassem, et. Al. (2017) mentioned reasons why collaboration was

important, such as (i) it made every member of the team able to cooperate to

achieve their shared and common goals by thinking, brainstorming, and offering

different perspectives to find a solution; (ii) it generated a strong meaning of a goal;

(iii) it provided an opportunity for every member of the team to participate,

communicate their ideas, and learn from one another; and (iv) it challenged each

member to analyze themselves such as thinking, applying, and feeling the clarity of

their own competencies3 (Solikin M. Juhro, 2019).

Scalability is a characteristic of an organization, system, model, or function

that describes its capability to cope and perform well under an increased or

3
This whole paragraph is taken from “The Role of Catalytic Collaboration in Leveraging
Transformational Leadership Competencies to Generate Sustainable Innovation”, a working paper by
Solikin M. Juhro, A. Farid Aulia, Dessy Aliandrina, Donni Hadiwaluyo, Edo Lavika, published by BI
Institute in 2019. This paper plays a significant role in connecting collaboration and scalability, even
though it emerged from transformational leadership context, but in author’s perspective, this idea can
be used practically for any applied leadership. Thus, collaboration is not only a result of leadership,
but also a trigger to develop the fittest leadership.

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expanding workload or scope. A system that scales well will be able to maintain or

even increase its level of performance or efficiency even as it is tested by larger and

larger operational demands. In financial markets, scalability refers to financial

institutions' ability to handle increased market demands; in the corporate

environment, a scalable company is one that can maintain or improve profit margins

while sales volume increases. (Hayes, 2020)

When scalability is applied to collaboration before the framework or system is

in place, each collaborator is allowed to assume an unanticipated pattern of

operations due to the uncertainty. The collaborative interaction is playing an

important role to enabling the unexpected pattern to be placed upon favorable

direction to achieve the goals.

Internships

Interns can be terrific additions to a nonprofit’s capacity building journey, and

can also contribute to the pipeline of future nonprofit leaders. It’s important to treat

interns professionally, which starts by clarifying whether they are unpaid volunteers

or paid employees (National Council of Nonprofits).

The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is reported to have said: “Your employees

are your brothers upon whom Allah has given you authority, so if a Muslim has

another person under his control, he/she should feed them with the like of what one

eats and clothe them with the like of what one wears and you should not overburden

them with what they cannot bear and if you do so, help them in their jobs”. And the

Prophet PBUH has exemplified this through his own behavior. As an employer, he

used to sit on the floor and eat with his servant boy Anas ibn Malik, who served him

for ten years. Anas is reported to have said that the Prophet (PBUH) never rebuked

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him for anything: “When I did something, he never questioned my manner of doing it;

and when I did not do something, he never questioned my failure to do it. He was the

most good-natured of all men.” (Shaikh, 2020)

College students have not yet had real-world job experience in the industry or

professional sector, and as a result, they are unprepared to enter the workforce.

Short-term internships (less than six months) are insufficient for students to gain

industrial experience and competency. Companies that accept internships also claim

that short-term internships are ineffective and can disrupt industry activity. MBKM’s

Internship program lasting 1-2 semesters, giving students with ample experience and

hands-on learning in the business (experiential learning). During the internship

students will gain hard skills (skills, complex problem solving, analytical), as well as

soft skills (professional/work ethics, communication, collaboration). Meanwhile,

industries that identify appropriate people may hire them right away, saving money

on hiring and initial/induction training. Students who are familiar with the workplace

will have a more stable transition into the workforce, and as a result of this activity,

industrial problems will flow into universities, requiring lecturers to update their

teaching and learning materials, and research topics in universities will be more

relevant. Companies, non-profit organizations, international organizations,

government institutions, and start-ups are all involved in collaborative learning

initiatives (Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi Kemdikbud RI, 2020, p. 11).

Islamic Social Finance

The concept of ISF begun in the early history of Islam and has grown

tremendously since last decade, with is scope becomes broader than the initial

sphere. It provided financial assistance in various dimensions of life for achieving ISF

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goals such as eradicating poverty, providing better infrastructure of school and

hospital, preserving communities and the environment (Zain, 2018).

Social finance can be defined as a structure of investment strategies with the

main objective to produce good impact for both social and environmental outcomes

for investors as well as society. Hence, it consists of broad scope such as

community investment, microfinance, social impact bonds, community loan funds

and some philanthropic investment programs which is included under this area

(VISIZ, 2016).

The Islamic Social Finance (ISF) definition is akin to social finance in general.

However, ISF has salient features that operate to achieve Maqasid Shariah

(Objectives of Islamic law). It is social and faithbased financing that provide financial

assistance and support people in need in order to alleviate human suffering as well

as to preserve environment from the conflict and disaster affected (World

Humanitarian Summit, 2016). There are three main types of Islamic social finance:

zakat, waqf, and non-profit Islamic microfinance (Beik, 2018). Accordingly, the

approach is to manage and invest funds to solve social challenges and to improve

communities and the environment (Dzuljastri Abdul Razak, 2020).

III. Methodology

The topics covered in this part are divided into two categories: study design and

portfolio review.

Study Design

A case study was chosen for this qualitative research since I wanted to

describe every stage of collaboration between two distinct organizations in the

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ecosystem of Islamic social finance. As a practitioner, I chose Laznas LMI as the

place to gather data, and my participation has been confirmed by the respective

leaders.

Portfolio Review

Within a very short of time, I did a contextual and scalability review on:

 1 memorandum of understanding

 1 document of planning & internship modul

 132 documents from intern’s assignments

 1 document of preliminary internship report

 A series of group texting among collaborators

 Related news/posts from online & social media

IV. Results

Summary of themes according to research question:

Table 1
Answering the question of how do actors operate the collaboration process to
perceived fruitful results.
Themes Actors Collaboration Results
Process
Setting Respective Leaders Discussion meeting Agreement on:
Common Goal (Director from Laznas  Improving
LMI & Dean from FEB competencies of
Unair) college student
 Reducing the gap
between academic &
practitioners
 Improving
governance and
impact of amil zakat
organization

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Examine Director & RnD Series of Focused Preparation Planning,
Business Manager from Laznas Group Discussion General Concept &
Process LMI; about : Schedules
Lecturer & Leader  Jobs List
from Islamic Economy  Competency
Major of FEB Unair Catalog4/Standard
 Key performance
indicator
 Man power
planning &
development
 Learning Objective
 Learning Outcome
 Learning
Methodology

Finding Items Director & RnD Workshop on  Conversion catalog of

to be Manager from Laznas converting Competencies and
Synchronized LMI; competencies Studies equal to 20
Lecturer & Leader standard into subject credit semester units
from Islamic Economy of studies, vice versa  2 internship modul :
Major of FEB Unair Zakat Management &
Empowering Program
Kick Off Respective Leaders Webinar on MBKM Online media exposure
Program from both, Lecturer, Internship & buy in from students
Students
On Going Manager, Mentor, Execution on :  100% achievement
Internship Expert & Supervisor  Classroom training on every
from Laznas LMI;  Coaching & assignments
Students & Lecturer Mentoring  Organization
 Work Assignments development for
(Problem Based Laznas LMI
Learning & Project (achievement of
Based Learning) some KPIs)
Evaluation Director & RnD Evaluation Meeting  100% students gain
Manager from Laznas their credits happily
LMI; & inspired
Lecturer & Leader  Correction for the
from Islamic Economy next batch
Major of FEB Unair  Involvement for
redesigning
curriculum
Enhanced Director & RnD Group discussion Initiative to extend
Scale Manager from Laznas with government collaboration in a
LMI; organization and national scale
Lecturer & Leader each association :
from Islamic Economy KNEKS, APSEII &
Major of FEB Unair FOZ5

4
Refer to SKKK Amil Zakat & SKKNI
5
KNEKS = Komite Nasional Ekonomi & Keuangan Syariah/ National Committee for Sharia Economy
& Finance ; APSEII = Asosiasi Program Studi Ekonomi Islam Indonesia /Association of Indonesian
Islamic Economy Majors ; FOZ = Forum Organisasi Zakat/ Zakat Organization Forum – an
association for Amil Zakat Organization

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 The leaders of both Laznas LMI & Islamic Economy Major of FEB Unair play

the majority of the stages listed above. It never occurs to them at the start of their

meeting that they should be dealing with all of those themes and processes. The

initial step of the process amongst top leaders produced a strong meaning of a goal,

which then created a snowball effect for the subsequent phases. Some of the results

aren't included in their initial planning, and the notion of extending the collaboration

to a national level has recently surfaced. From the perspective of the interns, this

program is highly inspirational and provides them with a broader understanding of

Islamic social finance than just theories.

We conducted a selected screening based on their process and results

scalability from the themes mentioned above. Key results and key factors of each

are selected using the same technique, as shown in table 2 below.

Table 2
Answering the question of what are the main influences for the collaboration can be
said enhanced and scalable
Key Themes Key Results Key Factors
Setting Common Goal Agreement on Reducing the Leadership, comprehension
gap between academic & of the crucial components in
practitioners the Islamic social finance
ecosystem
Examine Business General Concept Leadership
Process
Finding Items to be Conversion catalog of competency and learning
Synchronized Competencies and Studies methodologies mastery
equal to 20 credit semester
units
Evaluation 100% students gain their credit Competency and learning
methodologies mastery
Enhanced Scale Initiative to extend Leadership, comprehension
collaboration in a national of the crucial components in
scale the Islamic social finance
ecosystem

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 Leadership is the most influential component in described collaboration. This

leadership team is well-versed in the important parts of the Islamic social finance

ecosystem. A mastery of competency and learning methodologies results in

technical leadership and comprehension of complexities.

According to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) we have to treat employee with a

proper manner. This kind of structured internship provides an opportunity for Islamic

Social Finance Organization’s leaders to enhance their leadership and organization

culture as near as our prophet’s guidance. The collaborative process opens for

collaborative experiential learning. Every member of the team is invited to

participate, communicate their ideas, and learn from one another. And, because this

internship used competencies as the primary framework for planning activities, it

challenged each participant to analyze themselves in terms of thinking, applying, and

experiencing the clarity of their own competencies.

V. Conclusion

The collaboration between Laznas LMI and Airlangga University's Islamic

Economy Studies of Economy & Business Faculty is successfully provided matching

learning outcomes for minimum 20 credit semester unit in a semester. This

accomplishment exceeds our expectations, we might argue that academics and

practitioners are linked and matched in this setting. Every subject that islamic

economy students study over the course of a semester at college may be identified

as competences in amil zakat's everyday operations.

The benefits achieved by Laznas LMI as a provider of internship and research

facilities are increasingly considerable. The above-mentioned organizational

development might be a future study topic. From both a quantitative and qualitative

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viewpoint, the possibility to develop an integration strategy between academics, amil

zakat, and all other organizations in the islamic social finance ecosystem is very

fascinating to argue. A subliminal message is that any discipline from any institution

is admissible for islamic social finance goals.

As a result, we've learned that in order for anything to be scalable, it needs to

be delivered by competent leaders who work collaboratively and start with common

long-term goals. When our agenda is not scalable, maybe we are not competent

enough, and our goals are shallow, this conclusion can also be applied.

VI. References

Beik, D. I. (2018, December 13). Sekretaris Eksekutif World Zakat Forum dan Staf
Pengajar Departemen Ilmu Ekonomi Syariah FEM IPB. (R. Syawal,
Interviewer)
Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi Kemdikbud RI. (2020). Buku Panduan
Merdeka Belajar - Kampus Merdeka. In DIKTI, Buku Panduan Merdeka
Belajar - Kampus Merdeka. Jakarta: Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi
Kemdikbud RI.
Dzuljastri Abdul Razak, Q. D. (2020). Achieving Islamic Social Finance Goals
through Zakat, Waqf, and Sadaqa in Selected Countries: Issues and
Challenges. SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda, 38-
45.
Hayes, A. (2020, November 28). Investopedia. Retrieved August 1, 2021, from
Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scalability.asp
Lai, E. (2011). Motivation: A Literature Review. Pearson Research Report.
National Council of Nonprofits. (n.d.). National Council of Nonprofits. Retrieved
august 1, 2021, from https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/:
https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/interns-employee-or-
volunteer

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Ravishankar, R. A. (2021, May 26). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved August 1,
2021, from HBR.org: https://hbr.org/2021/05/its-time-to-officially-end-unpaid-
internships
Shaikh, D. A. (2020, January 5). Times of India. Retrieved August 1, 2021, from
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/a-matter-of-fact/islam-and-labour-
rights/
Solikin M. Juhro, A. F. (2019, November). The Role of Catalytic Collaborationin
Leveraging Transformational Leadership Competencies to Generate
Sustainavle Innovation. Working Paper, p. 5.
VISIZ. (2016). Vancouver Island Social Finance Report. Retrieved from
https://scalecollaborative.ca/app/
wikipedia. (n.d.). Retrieved August 1, 2021, from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activism
Zain, N. R. (2018). An Analysis on Islamic Social Finance for Protection and
Preservation of Maqāṣid Al-Sharī’ah. Journal of Islamic Finance, 6 (Special
Issue), 133–141.

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