Dr. Russell Ally

Dr. Russell Ally is the current Senior Director of Institutional Advancement at the University of the Free State, where he began his tenure in July 2021. In this position he oversees fundraising, alumni relations and institutional advancement. He is also a member of the university’s senior executive team, participating in the highest decision-making structures of the university, including the Rectorate. His immediate previous position was Executive Director of the Development and Alumni Department at the University of Cape Town where he served from August 2013 to June 2021. In this capacity he was responsible for institutional advancement, fundraising and alumni relation, managing a staff complement of over 30 people, including international staff. At UCT he also served on a number of university committees, most notably the Vice Chancellor’s Management Advisory Group, the Senior Leadership Group, the University Transformation Forum and the Special Executive Task Team.

Before joining UCT, he was the Ford Foundation’s Program Officer for Southern Africa, a nonprofit private grant making foundation based in New York in the USA. In this role he oversaw the Governance and Civil Society Program in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe. This involved elaborating the strategic framework for grant making, developing the grant portfolio, making grants to civil society-based organizations and other entities, monitoring and evaluating grants and grantee partners and managing an annual budget of close to $3 million. His duties also included supervising support staff and working with a grant management team.

Prior to Ford, he was the Country Representative of the South African Office of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, an endowed, nonprofit private grantmaking foundation based in Flint, Michigan, in the United States. In this capacity he managed the office staff and was responsible for an annual office budget of close to $4 million. Other duties included developing the office grant making strategy, overall oversight of the field office program, monitoring and evaluation of the grant making and conducting annual staff performance reviews. As head of the office, he interacted regularly with the Mott Trustees, including organizing many Trustee visits and making an annual presentation to the Mott Board in Flint on the work of the South Africa office.

Dr. Ally also worked for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as its Human Rights Projects Manager, overseeing a human rights institutional strengthening project. This involved providing direct support, training and capacity building to the country’s main human rights institutions to better understand their roles, put systems in place and develop work plans. The project further involved placing and supervising technical support staff in the Human Rights and Land Commissions who reported directly to him. During this time, Dr. Ally also served as the National Coordinator of the South African Government’s National Action Plan for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (NAP) working directly with all the government departments involved in promoting human rights. He was the main author of the National Action Plan that was submitted to the United Nations in 1998 as part of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 1996, Dr. Ally was appointed to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission where he served on the Human Rights Violation Committee chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was involved in planning the hearings of the Human Rights Violation Committee, supervising staff involved in statement taking and logistics, making findings on human rights violations and also participating in the writing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report.

Dr. Ally has taught at secondary school level, at a teacher training college and was a senior researcher in the African Studies Institute and senior lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Witwatersrand. As a senior researcher he coordinated and chaired the research seminar program of the African Studies Institute (later renamed the Institute for Advanced Social Research). As a senior lecturer he taught at all levels and supervised Masters and Ph.D. theses.

While at the University, he served on many senior bodies, including Senate and Council, was the founding Chairperson of the Academic Staff Association, a member of the University’s Transformation Forum and chaired a Task Group on Transformation and Affirmative Action.

Dr. Ally has a B.A. and Higher Diploma in Education from the University of Cape Town, a B.A. (Hons) and Masters from Rhodes University and a Doctorate from Cambridge University in Great Britain.

He has published in leading journals and written a full-length book on South Africa’s mining history. He has also written many book reviews, contributes articles on a regular basis to newspapers and has appeared on many radio and television interviews.

He also serves on a number of boards of nonprofits and civil society organizations. He is currently the Chairperson of the Inyathelo Institute of Advancement, which focuses on strengthening civil society in the country; Chairperson of the Council for Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC), which is dedicated to protecting and strengthening constitutional democracy in South Africa; on the Advisory Board of the Land and Accountability Research Centre (LARC), which provides support to communities on land reform and land restitution; and also serves on the editorial board of the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment (CAPSI), which is committed to promoting a culture of effective philanthropy and corporate social investment.

Dr Ally is a keen sportsman, having completed multiple marathons and ultramarathons, has earned national and provincial colours in athletics, hockey and tennis and is currently Chairperson of the Orangia Tennis Club in Cape Town, where he still plays league tennis.