Explore Our Projects

Zvandiri

Partnership & Fundraising Advisory | Proposal Development | Strategy & Positioning

Zvandiri is a pioneering, peer-led model that improves health and wellbeing outcomes for children, adolescents, and young adults living with HIV. Working closely with governments and partners, Zvandiri supports the institutionalization of youth-led care within public systems and has become a leading example of integrated, scalable support for young people.

Be Lumin has worked closely with Zvandiri in an embedded advisory capacity, supporting both fundraising and the broader strategic framing of the organization’s growth. Our partnership has included substantial proposal development and grant writing, alongside ongoing thought partnership with leadership on how to position the organization, communicate its value, and pursue the strongest opportunities for scale.

Beyond fundraising execution, we have supported Zvandiri’s leadership on business development capacity, organizational communications, and strategic direction. This included encouraging and helping shape the transition toward a more dedicated in-house business development function, including the recruitment of a Head of BD role with whom we continue to work closely. We have also supported the articulation of core strategic language, including framing around Thrive95, Zvandiri’s pillar-based approach to institutionalizing its model within government systems.

Our role has been to help translate complex, high-impact work into language, concepts, and opportunities that are clear, credible, and actionable – while working closely enough with the team to support how that vision is communicated, funded, and carried forward over time.

WAJAMAMA

Partnership & Fundraising Advisory | Strategy & Positioning | Proposal Development

WAJAMAMA focuses on holistic reproductive health, providing essential services to economically marginalized women, adolescents, and their families across Zanzibar. Through its innovative Group Care Model, WAJAMAMA is strengthening maternal and child health and helping more women and children access the care they need to thrive.

Be Lumin began working with WAJAMAMA in 2024, initially supporting immediate fundraising opportunities while assessing and strengthening the organization’s broader funding approach. From there, the partnership expanded into deeper strategic work across both fundraising and organizational direction.

We worked alongside WAJAMAMA’s leadership to build a more targeted funding pipeline, shape stronger proposals, and support live grant opportunities. At the same time, we led a broader strategy review across both the nonprofit and for-profit arms of the organization, helping refine vision, positioning, growth priorities, and thinking around blended revenue models. We also provided advisory support on fundraising structure, pipeline optimization, and key leadership decisions, including team and hiring considerations.

D-tree

Partnership & Fundraising Advisory | Proposal Development | Strategy & Positioning

D-tree International works with governments to strengthen primary healthcare systems, helping improve decision-making at every stage of a person’s health journey. Since 2024, Be Lumin has partnered with D-tree across two major streams of work: ongoing business development support and strategic positioning.

On the fundraising side, we provide retainer-based partnership and fundraising advisory alongside substantial proposal development and grant writing support. This has included helping D-tree sharpen its fundraising approach, optimize its pipeline, operationalize business development systems in-house, and strengthen how opportunities are tracked and managed over time. We have supported key account management, annual fundraising planning across revenue categories, and leadership decision-making related to partnerships, hiring, and business development capacity.

In 2025, our work expanded to include support for D-tree’s company strategy process. Using a design-thinking approach, we helped create the space, structure, and facilitation needed for D-tree’s team to reflect on its direction, clarify its unique edge, and articulate how its work fits within a changing market. D-tree defined the strategy; our role was to guide the process, surface key themes, and help translate that thinking into a clear and usable narrative. From there, we developed audience-facing materials, supported internal communications, and helped embed the new positioning across external collateral as the strategy began to take hold. We continue to support D-tree as that narrative evolves over time.

"Where would WAJAMAMA be without Christie and Be Lumin?"

I met Christie by chance at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford in April 2024, and to this day, I tell her she was my best ROI from Skoll—and I mean every word. As founder and CEO of a young grassroots organization with extremely limited resources, no leadership teammates at the time, and a skeleton team trying to change the world, I desperately needed someone like Christie. I knew it the moment we met, and investing in her services was one of the best decisions I've made for WAJAMAMA.

Christie became far more than a fundraising consultant—she was my thinking partner, a critical role I desperately needed as a solo founder. She was fully invested in our mission and vision, often feeling like an extension of our team rather than an outside consultant. Beyond fundraising support, Christie and her team helped refine our organizational strategy, communications, and content—efforts that directly contributed to securing funding, including our first catalytic grant, and ensuring our foundation was strong enough for funders to invest in us.

Be Lumin was worth every single penny, and my only regret is not investing in more hours with them. We simply would not be where we are today without Christie and her team. Because of them, our future looks bright—rare for such a young organization.
- Nafisa Jiddawi | Founder and CEO, WAJAMAMA
"Be Lumin have become vital partners in our organisational growth and development."

We needed someone who could support our strategy development and fundraising. We found that and so much more in Christie and the Be-Lumin team! Christie and her colleagues immediately grasped who we are, what we are trying to do and where we could be, and have expertly guided us with our strategy, scoping grant opportunities, writing, submitting and winning grant applications! Through virtual and in person work together, Be-Lumin have become vital partners in our organisational growth and development. I can’t recommend them more highly.
- Nicola Willis | Founder and Executive Director, Zvandiri
"A consistently positive experience"

Working with Christie has been a consistently positive experience. She brings a strategic mindset and strong communication skills to every project—both in writing and facilitation. Christie excels at synthesizing complex information into clear, well-structured deliverables and has a talent for breaking down overwhelming projects into manageable, actionable steps.
What I particularly appreciate is her ability to understand funder perspectives while genuinely valuing our organization and our current stage of development. She has a strong fluency in global health and quickly gets up to speed on new contexts, then effectively applies and connects that knowledge across different projects. Christie creates clear processes and timelines that help teams stay aligned and focused on shared goals, and she's reliable and thoughtful in her approach.
I'd recommend Christie for projects requiring strategic thinking, funder engagement, and clear communication—especially in global health contexts where understanding both organizational needs and funder expectations is critical.
- Rachel Hoffman | Director of Program Excellence, D-tree
"A result (i.e. strategy) that everyone is excited and proud of, and ultimately eager to implement."

“The strategy exercise can be time consuming, chaotic and with vague output. Be Lumin customised the process to our pace and needs, built a nice framework and above all took us to a result (i.e. the Strategy) that everyone is excited and proud of, and ultimately eager to implement.”
- Riccardo Lampariello | CEO, D-tree
"We won major bids for Gray Ink clients totalling over $55M."

"I first brought Christie into Gray Ink as she had particular experience working with for profits, especially pre-profit startups, and with international opportunities. Christie immediately started working with a select few clients who had never fundraised before and required additional training and coaching. She was incredibly patient with them. Her ability to support high-level strategy work, manage both the clients and their partners, and produce high-quality outputs was uniquely valuable. She could be trusted to just run with things. Together, we won major bids for Gray Ink clients totalling over $55M."
- Sydney Gray | Founder, Gray Ink
"I would strongly recommend her to anyone looking for the right partner to make a project, or even an idea, happen."

“Working with Christie is a real pleasure. She's the perfect collaborator: considered, insightful, but also full of energy and an endless ability to just get stuff done. I would strongly recommend her to anyone looking for the right partner to make a project, or even an idea, happen.”
- Matt Oliver | Executive Director, Campaigns in Global Health
"Christie made it easy for us to consult and collaborate."

“It was brilliant to work with Christie on a series of leadership workshops for our Business Development managers. Christie made it easy for us to consult and collaborate, ensuring she really understood our culture and how we work together, so was able to tailor the workshops carefully to fit our specific needs. The workshops were incredibly engaging and interactive, Christie's warm persona put everyone instantly at ease, enabling the team to share their experiences, challenge each other in a safe environment and get the most out of the experience.”
- Jo Clark | Head of Business Development Operations, What3Words
"I hope to work with Christie for a long time to come!"

“We were looking for a consultant to help shape and accelerate our new mental health initiative. We got that and so much more with Christie. She quickly became a trusted, embedded and essential teammate. I have to remind myself she is part time, given how responsive and productive she is. She’s been fully committed to our success and mission. She’s made us more organized and expanded our scope considerably. And she’s remarkably versatile with great intuition and a wide range of skills, and is also very willing to jump in and learn new things. She’s done everything from producing high-gloss outward-facing collateral to developing prototype digital solutions to interviewing stakeholders. I hope to work with Christie for a long time to come!"
- Neal Lesh | Chief Strategy Officer, Dimagi