Are you ready to use your writing and communications skills to expand the impact of a pioneering social enterprise that is correcting the vision of millions of low-income customers so they can work, learn, stay safe, and care for their families?

VisionSpring seeks a persuasive and collaborative communications associate to tell and amplify our story. The associate will support content creation and development for our audiences, both creating original content directly and collaborating with teammates and freelancers as needed. Audiences include current and potential individual donors; institutional donors such as foundations, governments, corporations, and venture philanthropists; media outlets; partners; and other key stakeholders. The person in this role will support VisionSpring’s communications efforts, including public relations, reports, social media, website copywriting, and ad hoc communications needs.

As VisionSpring builds its marketing and communications capacity globally, the associate works in close collaboration with internal stakeholder groups such as the marketing and development teams, and program and sales teams across eight key markets—Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia—and other emerging and frontier markets. This position reports to the global manager of communications and may be located anywhere in the Eastern time zone of the United States.

About you

• You are deeply curious about social enterprise models, field operations, and the experiences of partners and customers. That makes you an exceptional organizational ambassador.
• You are an excellent writer and storyteller. You find joy in personal collaboration with internal stakeholders across time zones to uncover the colorful details that make your stories compelling, even if it means starting early some mornings.
• You shine when communicating with internal and external organizational stakeholders and your words inspire excitement about what we can do together.
• You have an eye for design and love generating distinctive messaging that allows mission-driven organizations to do good, better.
• You enjoy creating structure, have exceptional focus and follow-through, and prioritize before you act.
• You are flexible and thrive in environments where each day is unlike the next.

About us

• As a social enterprise, social change motivates us first. Our focus on sales and revenue targets serves and advances our mission objective—to increase functioning, productivity, and income earning potential for our low-income consumers by correcting refractive error with eyeglasses.
• VisionSpring is the social enterprise accelerating the use of eyeglasses in emerging and frontier markets. Clear vision creates opportunities for increased learning, work, safety, civic participation, and quality of life.
• We are working to transform the systemic dysfunction of an optical market that has failed to deliver eyeglasses—a 700-year-old technology—to nearly a billion consumers in need of vision correction, most of whom live on less than $4 a day.
• We serve low-income consumers, not as beneficiaries but as customers. Our customers expect a high-quality and affordable product, and they will spend limited discretionary income for the immediate and tangible benefits of vision correction.
• By selling eyeglasses, we awaken new demand and seed a viable market. By selling new eyeglasses we are able to serve four times as many people per dollar input than the alternative of donating recycled ones. To efficiently scale, we must deliver each new unit with lower cost.
• We run our business on both sales metrics and social impact measures. We use a range of organizational forms and practices to get the job done.
• We believe in scaling our impact, not our organization. We are a lean team of doers.

What you’ll do:

Generally

• Master writing with the VisionSpring “voice,” and develop the capacity to tell our story to a variety of audiences.
• Work globally with key internal stakeholders, i.e. development, sales, programs, and employee relations teams, to translate and reflect key impact stories to optimize their sales, services, events, conferences, and overall business development.
• Capitalize on opportunities to teach colleagues how to communicate with the VisionSpring voice.
• Help maintain VisionSpring’s brand throughout all content including appropriate use of logo, consistent look and feel, and messaging.
• Create stories of impact for PR, social, donor, and B2B audiences by working with colleagues in VisionSpring’s key markets to solicit customer stories from the field, and working with organizational leaders to develop narratives that highlight the successes and impact of VisionSpring initiatives globally.

Internal & External Communications

• Act as an internal “investigative reporter” to solicit stories from our team for repurposing in support of public relations efforts, social media, newsletters, donor reporting website copy, etc.
• Monitor & respond to VisionSpring’s audience on social platforms.
• Assist with developing content marketing and program copy to support market messaging, vision screening and event communications, as well as program or market development materials.
• Contribute and organize content to keep the website up to date.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in writing-intensive field of study with 3-5 years of relevant work experience, or Master’s degree in writing-intensive field of study with internship experience.
• Outstanding writing skills and the ability to proofread at an advanced level.
• Comfort with a flexible work schedule and working across multiple time zones.
• Must be legally and permanently authorized to work in the United States.
• Domestic travel will be required. Interest in travel to markets is a positive.
• Advanced Microsoft Word skills, proficient in Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Impeccable attention to detail with strong project management, organizational, and analytical skills.
• Interest in social enterprise models and desire to learn how to articulate and share VisionSpring’s unique approach.
• Must meet the highest standards of ethics and personal integrity, with a demonstrated capacity for discretion and for handling sensitive information with care.
• Must be highly organized with extraordinary follow through and a strong personal sense of accountability.

You will impress us if you have:

• Familiarity with Adobe Creative Cloud.
• Experience, and a commitment to, working respectfully with a diverse team; experience collaborating with outside consultants to move projects forward.
• Experience living in a low-income setting and/or working/studying across languages and cultures.
• Experience crafting communications for social enterprises and/or nonprofits.
• Experience using project management software (especially Asana).
• Experience with email marketing platforms and developing email marketing campaigns (HubSpot, Constant Contact and/or MailChimp preferred).
• Working knowledge of how to analyze and use data from Google Analytics.