There is no press office. There is an email address.
Every message on this page goes to the same place: the founder's inbox, answered by him. No form, no ticket number, no autoresponder, and no list you get added to for asking a question.
If you are about to write about this
Miftah Foundation is not incorporated and does not legally exist as an entity. No application for federal charitable tax exemption has been filed with the IRS and nothing is pending, so nothing given to it is deductible on anyone's return. It has no board and no staff, and no program has ever run — zero students, zero cleanups, zero audits.
Please describe it as a founding-stage design rather than as an organization. The accuracy guide below has the exact phrasings, and the transparency page has the complete ledger behind them.
Direct Contact
Where it goes, and what to expect back.
- Everything — board seats, partnerships, pilot sites, press, corrections, and "what stage is this actually at". Put the topic in the subject line and it gets read in the right order.
yusuf.gadelrab06@gmail.com - Where
- San José, California. Every program is designed to start locally, on purpose — a foundation with no track record should be judged by people who can walk to it. There is no office, because there is no organization to put in one.
- Languages
- English and Arabic, both fluently. العربية welcome, and preferred if it is easier for you — that is rather the entire point of the thing.
- What comes back
- A direct answer from one student, written by hand. If a role, a program or a partnership is not ready, you will be told that plainly rather than kept warm. Nothing is tracked, nothing is scored, and nothing is passed to anybody else.
- Corrections
- If anything on any Miftah page overstates what exists — a claim, a number, a status — send it and it gets fixed rather than argued about. That standard is written down on the transparency page and it is the one commitment on this site that costs nothing to keep and everything to break.
Press Kit
Everything a writer needs, already checked.
Copy these verbatim. They are written to be accurate as-is, which means every one of them says out loud that nothing has been filed — because a boilerplate that omits that is the exact sentence that gets a founder in trouble.
Boilerplate
One line
Miftah Foundation is a founding-stage nonprofit design in San José, California, planning four free programs — bilingual computer science education, student navigation, neighborhood cleanups, and security audits for small nonprofits. It is not yet incorporated and no program has run.
Short — about 60 words
Miftah Foundation (مفتاح, Arabic for "key") is a founding-stage nonprofit design by SJSU computer science student Yusuf Gadelrab. It proposes four free programs in San José: bilingual CS education, immigrant student navigation, neighborhood cleanups with a measurement layer, and free security audits for small nonprofits. It is not incorporated, has raised nothing, and has run no programs.
Long — about 120 words
Miftah Foundation (مفتاح, Arabic for "key"; tagline "The key is free") is a founding-stage design for a San José nonprofit intended to remove the cost barrier to opportunity. Four programs are planned as one organization: CodeBridge, free computer science taught in a learner's own language alongside English; Passage, plain-language guides and eligibility-filtered scholarship matching for immigrant and first-generation students, with referral to accredited legal help; EcoImpact, organized cleanups in the least-serviced parts of the city, logged as auditable impact records; and Shield, free security audits for small nonprofits, delivered by supervised student volunteers under written authorization. As of today the organization is not incorporated, has no board, has raised and spent nothing, and has run no programs.
Founder biography
Short bio
Yusuf Gadelrab is a computer science undergraduate at San José State University (class of 2028) and the founder of Miftah Foundation. He is a CS tutor and curriculum lead with SJSU's Coding Warriors and the CS department, and an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Ethel Tshukudu's CS Education Research Lab.
Long bio
Yusuf Gadelrab is a computer science undergraduate at San José State University, class of 2028, and the founder of Miftah Foundation. Since August 2024 he has worked as a CS tutor and curriculum lead with SJSU's Coding Warriors and the university's computer science department, running CS programming at Yerba Buena High School with expansion to Lynbrook High School underway. As an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Ethel Tshukudu's CS Education Research Lab he contributed to an IRB-approved, mixed-methods study of bilingual programming instruction with 60 participants, and is the seventh of eight authors on the resulting paper, "Exploring Bilingual Coding for Inclusive Computer Science Learning" (SIGCSE TS 2026). He is fluent in Arabic and English, and lives in San José.
One paper, not two. Yusuf is a co-author on exactly one peer-reviewed publication: "Exploring Bilingual Coding for Inclusive Computer Science Learning", doi:10.1145/3770761.3777339, SIGCSE TS 2026 — seventh of eight authors, in the order Tshukudu, Shah, Kieu, Deeb, Venkateswaran, Ghai, Gadelrab, Hada. If a source credits him with more than that, the source is wrong.
Name, pronunciation and marks
- Miftah مفتاح
- Arabic for key. Romanised miftāḥ; roughly MIF-taah, stress on the second syllable. Written "Miftah" in English text — no diacritics needed in running copy. The Arabic form is a real brand element, not decoration, and should be set right-to-left when used.
- Tagline
- The key is free. Four words, sentence case, full stop included. It is a statement about price, and it is meant to be read literally: every planned program is free at the point of use.
- Mark
- A single gold key, drawn as an outline. Use it on a near-black ground, keep clear space of at least the mark's own width on every side, and never recolour it outside the gold family or stretch it.
Open the key mark (SVG) → - Programs
- CodeBridge, Passage, EcoImpact, Shield. One word each, internal capital where shown, no hyphens. Each is a program of Miftah Foundation, never a separate organization.
- Ground · #0B0B0D
- Gold · #D4AF37
- Gold light · #E9C96A
- Bone · #F2EDE4
Type is a system serif for display and a system sans for body — the site loads no external fonts at all, so there is no font file to send you and nothing to license.
Accuracy Guide
The sentences that would be wrong, and what to write instead.
Most of these are the kind of thing a writer would produce in good faith from a normal nonprofit press kit. They are wrong here for one reason: the entity does not exist yet.
| Do not write | Because | Write instead |
|---|---|---|
| "a registered charity" / "the nonprofit" | It is not registered anywhere and is not a legal entity. | "a founding-stage nonprofit design" or "a planned nonprofit" |
| "has applied for charitable status" / "its application is pending" | No application has been filed with the IRS and nothing is pending. | "has not yet filed for federal charitable exemption" |
| "donations support its work" | Nothing is being solicited, there is no account, and nothing given is deductible on anyone's return. | "is not accepting contributions and has no payment path" |
| "its board" / "its team" / "staff" | There is one person and no board has been seated. | "its founder" or "a single-person organization" |
| "serves students in San José" | No program has run. Zero students, cleanups or audits. | "plans to serve students in San José" |
| Any impact figure attributed to Miftah | There are none. The one measured result on this site is a university research finding, not an organizational outcome. | Attribute research findings to the SIGCSE paper and its authors |
| "co-author of several papers" | Exactly one peer-reviewed publication, seventh of eight authors. | "a co-author on one peer-reviewed paper" |
What is not available, and will not be. There are no participant photographs, no beneficiary case studies, no client names and no impact statistics — because there are no participants, beneficiaries, clients or results. Nobody will be produced for a quote about a program they have not attended. When those things exist they will be published here, with consent, and not before.
Writing about it, or want to be told when it is real?
Both are the same inbox. Press questions get answered directly, including the awkward ones — especially the awkward ones, since they are the reason the transparency page exists.