This chapter discusses how Saudi women have actively negotiated gender boundaries and expanded their scope through the daily practice of charity work and the networks established among fellow social workers and volunteers. Founded in 1961–2 as a women-only initiative, the First Women’s Welfare Association in Jeddah counts among the oldest extant welfare associations in the kingdom enlisted with the Ministry of Social Affairs. The longue-durée perspective adopted in the chapter pays attention to the changing aspirations of different generations involved with the charity organization.

Although the First Women’s Welfare Association is often considered a "traditional charity" with an "Islamic aid" approach, its focus on single women, female-headed households, and the feminization of poverty transgresses traditional norms in multiple ways. The chapter discusses the charity’s use of donations, zakat and ṣadaqa, food banks, endowments, and shelters for single women and female-headed households. By situating practices of almsgiving within the wider legal and political framework of the zakat tax imposed by the Saudi state, as well as within the context of further legislation targeting money laundering and terrorist financing, the research highlights that religious ideals are subject to interpretation and object to various authoritative claims.

The first chapter posits the book’s approach in the context of dominant ideas about civil society in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is widely considered an authoritarian state with little space for any civil initiative to maneuver in or to flourish. The rentier state paradigm, which has dominated much of the discussion of state–society relations in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, assumes that the oil-rich state buys its citizens’ acquiescence through the strategic investment of hydrocarbon revenues into welfare and high living standards. Yet Saudi Arabia’s growing wealth gap challenges these assumptions.

This book presents a different perspective from which to view and understand Saudi Arabian society, not from a top-down vantage point but "bottom-up," from the point of view of local civil society initiatives. The chapter introduces the four charity organizations that form the basis of the book’s analysis. Given the difficulties of field research in Saudi Arabia, the chapter discusses opportunities and challenges that this project faced and how these contributed to the research design and findings.

The chapter discusses how Islamic charity has functioned as an umbrella that granted legitimacy to all kinds of youth practices in contemporary Saudi Arabia. Charity here emerges as lifestyle and liberty, as a safe space that has allowed Saudi youth to test the boundaries, experiment with lifestyles, and enjoy sociability and autonomy outside of the family.

At the heart of the chapter are the Hikers, an informal organization that began in 2010 by promoting hiking, sports, and cultural events for a social cause. Like many youth initiatives at the time, it reflected a wish to bring about change and to be part of broader societal change to which it was contributing. Despite the group’s apolitical character, this public orientation put them at risk of surveillance and intervention. The "Third Sector" has become an integral part of the new political agenda of King Salman’s government. The chapter explores the ways in which the Saudi state has increasingly regulated and monitored civil society activism, through new institutions and legislation passed over the last decade, in the name of promoting the "Third Sector" in Saudi Arabia.

This chapter examines the relationships between volunteerism and religion, between youth activism and Islamic charity. During the reign of King ʿAbdallah, informal groups that advocated volunteering flourished among youth in Saudi Arabia. The rise of youth activism in Saudi Arabia is tied to the rise of social media.

At the heart of this chapter is the Young Initiative Group (YIG), an informal organization that grew out of the efforts of youth who distributed meals during Ramadan 2009. The chapter explores how the YIG negotiated alternative forms of belonging and community through charity work. The YIG embedded its volunteering practices within the religious obligation of alms and compassion for the needy. The group’s community approach was rooted in an Islamic ethics of care. This appeared to be both a reflection of the personal religiosity of some of its founders and strategic positioning vis-à-vis the authorities, given the initiative’s lack of legal status. The YIG’s rhetorical emphasis on family-like relations among volunteers, together with a critique of consumption patterns and references to Islamic norms of benevolence, created an apolitical profile of a group that promoted social reform.

The final chapter summarizes the major findings of the book along two perspectives.

First, the book shows that the study of civil society under authoritarianism needs to take a bottom-up approach that pays attention to local issues and gives a voice to the people engaged for the public good and for the local community. At its heart, the debate about civil society in Saudi Arabia is about the difference between agency and sovereignty. Saudi Arabia is a country in which the population profoundly lacks popular sovereignty. Yet ordinary men and women in Saudi Arabia – young and old; social activists, philanthropists, and social workers; Saudis and non-Saudis – do have agency.

Second, the analysis shows that where the public social welfare system of the state has failed or systematically excluded specific segments of the population, charity organizations have tried to meet some of the needs of marginalized groups. Sometimes this transgresses the policies set down by the state; sometimes they complement or occasionally work together with the state. The meaning of charity has been subject to debate and scrutiny. Charity is a constantly evolving, contested field, in which numerous actors engage – often highly critical of each other and with competing approaches.

The Majid Society, at the heart of this chapter, aspires to offer development. The development approach has not, however, replaced a religious culture of aid. Instead, the chapter explores how development can be expressed through the language of Islam and financed through Islamic charity. The chapter explores the organization’s training facility, the “productive families” approach, a program tackling illiteracy among mothers, and the use of microcredit schemes, all of which the Majid Society directed at female beneficiaries of aid.

The welfare association was established in 1998 at the initiative of Prince Majid bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz (1938–2003). This raises the question of how far royal charity organizations can be considered part of Saudi civil society. With a focus on national development and capacity building, the Majid Society resonates strongly with the public discourse of poverty as initiated and moderated by the Saudi state. The chapter critically looks at state approaches to poverty and how the Saudi state has come to dictate the ways poverty is discussed in public. This raises the question of how far charity organizations act in support of the state, complementing state efforts rather than challenging the status quo.