Frank Julie and Associates
Consultants, Strategists, Advisors, Facilitators

Knowledge is Power but Consciousness is Light!

Frank Julie

Frank Julie and Associates is a community development consultancy focused on strengthening the leadership and management capacity of NGOs/CBO to assist them to deliver on their developmental mandate. We operate all over Southern- and East Africa and pursue three strategies in the execution of our mission namely, collaborative learning, continuous support and follow up and strategic communication through the dissemination of relevant information.

We offer workshops in:
Professional fundraising and proposal writing
Fundraising in a time of financial crisis (3 hour seminar)
Getting your board on board
Effective networking and marketing
Effective NPO leadership and management
Train-the-Trainer skills (4 days)
Personal development and self-management
Project management

Frank Julie’s background

Frank Julie is an author, activist, organizational development practitioner, consultant, advisor, strategist and facilitator, known to many in the non-profit sector in South Africa through his regular fundraising and leadership workshops. His journey in the development sector started in the late 1970’s as a volunteer, organizer and programmes manager for various community based organisations (CBOs). .
Professional Activity
In the early 1990’s he launched the Resource Action Group (RAG), a youth development agency focusing on building capacity amongst young marginalized youth to access sustainable livelihoods. He was the executive director for 10 years.
Apart from his own consulting business, Frank Julie & Associates, Frank is very active in several other organisations, mostly volunteering his time and resources.
Frank is passionate about youth, which is why he is the founder and executive director of YoungPeople@Work, an organisation designed to empower unemployed youth through life-long learning and connecting them with opportunities.
Frank was a founding trustee of the Youth Development Network, a consortium of 6 youth development agencies, where he served for 5 years.
People First Foundation was co-founded and is chaired by Frank. The foundation consists of a group of highly experienced development practitioners and strategic partners, sharing their skills and experiences with survivalist and marginalized CBOs.
Having co-founded and served as a trustee of South African Fundraising and Leadership Academy (SAFULA), Frank went on to be the founder of the Fundraising Mentoring Network (FMN), Music Academy for Rural Youth (MARY) and the Food Relief Alliance of South Africa (FRASA).
Books authored
Frank is the author of “The Art of Leadership and Management on the Ground” and “The Roots of the NGO Crisis in South Africa – A Look Beyond the Surface”.
He regularly contributes articles on development to various magazines, journals and websites around the world. Some of the articles include “18 Ideas to Avoid a Funding Crisis“, “23 Sins of Management“, “13 Less Known Habits of Highly Effective Leaders“, “Effective People Development in a Non-Profit Organization“, “Networking by Design not by Default” and many more.
Education
Frank studied social science at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in the early 1980’s, and Adult Education and Learning at the UCT in the early 1990’s, culminating in the completion of an MPhil (Adult Education). His thesis focused on the NGO Crisis, Leadership Discontinuity and Learning over 3 Historical Periods in South Africa, where he explored the evolution of the NGO sector and how different modes of learning impacted on leadership continuity over a period of about 40 years.
He also studied the practice of development at the CDRA and fundraising and development at the CEDPA based in Washington DC in the USA. Frank travelled extensively in different parts of the world to study development models on the ground over a period of 20 years.

In-house workshops

Blowing new life into our organisations!
Effective leadership and management of NPO.
Professional fundraising – principles and practices.
Effective proposal writing – how to write the winning funding proposal.
Effective governance – how to get your board on board!
Effective money management – don’t chase after money, let money chase you!
Personal development and self-management – how to start living to work and not working to live!
Media and marketing – how to build visibility to attract donors!
Effective networking for organisational sustainability
Effective financial management
Facilitation skills
Short inspirational talks to staff, volunteers and board members
Other services:
Strategic planning – how to reposition your organization to deal with rapid change.
Developing a long-term fundraising strategy.
External organizational/project evaluations to measure impact.
Fees are negotiable and based on budget limitations.
For more information and to book your in-house workshop, please email Frank Julie and Associates (Reg. nr: CK 2005/045975/23) at frankjulie@telkomsa.netor send a text message with a request for more information to 078 812 4603.

Workshop photos

Books by Frank Julie

The Art of Leadership and Management on the Ground:

A practical guide for leaders and managers in the NGO sector to build sustainable organisations for permanent social change! With foreword by Professor Linda Cooper – Senior Lecturer, Centre for Higher Education and Development (CHED) University of Cape Town and comments and accompanying questions by James Taylor, executive director at the Community Development Resource Association (CDRA).

Extract from the book:
“To meet the demands of a successful transformation in any organisation, community or society, every leader must be prepared to undergo an internal transformation, a painful process cleansing a leader from the contamination of an unconscious, unthinking, gender-, race-, and rank blind society. Like steel forged in the white heat burning the impurities, so a leader is moulded on the anvil of those invisible social forces that must lead to change – human change, a change that must lead those at the margins to have more access to resources and power over choices. The leader of today must be prepared to sit in the fire of transformation without getting burned!”

The Roots of the NGO Crisis in South Africa

In this historical analysis Frank Julie postulates that the roots of the current NGO crisis in South Africa can be located in the shifts in leadership and modes of learning that have occurred within three historical periods. These shifts were accompanied by broader shifts in the power relations in South Africa post 1994 and the witting or unwitting collusion of sections of the NGO leadership to a discourse that was detrimental to the interest of the poor and marginalized. Julie argues that the entry of new leadership generations into the NGO sector and how knowledge, skills and experiences were produced and transferred in the second and third historical periods facilitated this collusion.

“I really like what you are saying, what you do with the issue, I think it’s a great study and well worth the reading by anyone in leadership positions in South Africa. Great work!(Allan Kaplan: Co-director of Proteus Initiative and Author of Development Practitioners and Social Process: Artists of the Invisible)

Fundraising Strategies for Struggling NPOs

With the increasing socio-economic challenges amplified by Covid-19, the country is in dire need of a strong and vibrant civil society sector to mitigate the effects of a society in perpetual crisis. Post 1994 there has been an explosion and exponential growth of non-profit organisations in South Africa with over 200 000 recorded in 2020. With the existing pool of funding rapidly shrinking, this has led to a frantic competition for resources and a decimation of many non-profit organisations!!

With over 40 year experience in the mobilising resources for grassroots based NPOs and written from a deep understanding of our local context, Julie guides those organisations who are battling to survive during this difficult period. He departs from the dominant narrative which views fundraising only as money raising.

Adopting a holistic and integrated approach, the Julie highlights the importance of building organisations with integrity and strong credibility that will attract donors. It

views fundraising as a means to an end and not an end in itself. Included in the book are valuable anecdotes from personal experience, fundraising tips from highly experienced experts in the NPO sector as well as donors and a resource list of sample documents for your novice fundraiser.