Global Evaluation and Research Manager - VisionSpring

Are you a change maker, excited about generating and using evidence, who wants to play a pivotal role in restoring vision for millions of people in low-income settings?

VisionSpring, an international social enterprise, seeks a Global Evaluation and Research Manager, who will develop, commission, quality assure, and execute evaluation and research projects in line with VisionSpring’s mission and vision.

She/he will play a key role in the generation of evidence evaluating programmatic and organizational impact in the countries where VisionSpring operates: currently Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Vietnam and Zambia.

In collaboration with the Senior Lead, Global Evaluation and Research (currently based in our India office), the Global Evaluation and Research Manager, will manage VisionSpring’s portfolio of evaluation and research projects which range in scope from internal evaluations of individual projects to large-scale randomized controlled trial led by international academic teams – and everything in between.

The post holder will ensure that our programs are based on the best evidence available – whether that has been generated by VisionSpring or others – leveraging learning to grow our scale and impact. The Global Evaluation and Research Manager will support the Senior Lead, Global Evaluation and Research in representing VisionSpring as a thought leader using evaluation results and data to communicate emerging trends, data, effective practices, and evidence.

She/he will actively form and manage strategic partnerships with research institutes, universities, research firms and individual consultants. The Global Evaluation and Research Manager is a member of the Global Program Office reporting to the Senior Lead, Global Evaluation and Research.

About You

• Mission-driven, entrepreneurial leader. You build a mission-driven unit to support the delivery of the organization’s long-term outcomes through evaluation and research. You foster ideation, iteration, and learning and you are an analytical thinker. You prize useful, fit-for-purpose evidence over methodological perfection.
• Curious and passionate about evidence. You are curious about how our programs work and keep asking questions until you understand them well enough to execute high-quality evaluation and research that improves their effectiveness and efficiency. You are a passionate advocate of evidence use and infect others with this enthusiasm.
• Customer-centric. You centre evaluation and research designs around defined value propositions for evidence users, valuing customer experience and feedback.
• Scaling champion. You are motivated to leverage data, evidence and learning on a small to scale reach millions of people based on analyses of cost-effectiveness, repeatability, customer demand, and market opportunity.
• Inclusive player-coach. You mentor and develop people so that VisionSpring becomes an ever more evidence-led organization. In a diverse, growth-stage organization you create opportunities for participation and increased responsibility. You model vulnerability and accountability and roll up your sleeves to deliver when needed.
• Resource mobilizer. You support building cases for support rooted in rigorous program design, and evidence of impact.
• Collaborator. You have a track record of delivering and managing multi-stakeholder research partnerships.

About Us

• VisionSpring is creating access to affordable eyewear, everywhere. Clear vision creates opportunities for increased learning, work, safety, civic participation, and quality of life.
• 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.
• We are working to transform the systemic dysfunction of an optical market that has failed to deliver eyeglasses – a 700-year-old technology – to 1.1 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

Research and Evaluation Design and Delivery

• Scope the evidence needs of VisionSpring programs and develop evaluation plans with clearly articulated purpose, research questions, protocols and plans for how the evidence generated will be used. Ensure evidence users will get evidence that they will find useful.
• Design data collection instruments, from administrative data collection to structured participant questionnaires to qualitative interview guides that enable VisionSpring to answer research and evaluation questions robustly.
• Manage all the necessary processes for evaluation and research delivery, from the development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to data cleaning to IRB and/or ethical approval processes to the analysis of routine data collection to the day-to-day coordination of the work of enumerators.
• Ensure that evaluation and research projects are following best practices around data protection, informed consent and research ethics.
• Lead the external commissioning of specific evaluations or evaluation components (e.g. survey data collection) identifying potential partner organizations and working with colleagues to execute high quality procurement processes and partner management.
• Analyze data and create research outputs (e.g. reports, one-pagers and presentations) that meet the evidence needs of evidence users – internal and external.

Evaluation and Research Strategy and Culture

• Work with colleagues in the Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) team to develop and implement VisionSpring’s MERL Strategy and Framework.
• Develop related policies, guidelines processes and standard procedures, leading on areas that you have unique expertise or a particular passion.
• Foster a culture of evidence use at VisionSpring, coaching colleagues to understand how evidence in all its forms can support their work and further the organization’s goals.

Knowledge Management

• Create evidence ‘products’ (e.g. summary notes) that puts high-quality, actionable evidence at the fingertips of VisionSpring colleagues.
• Work with program teams to document program results and lessons learned.
• Lead by example in your own knowledge management, including how you organize project files in VisionSpring’s SharePoint system.

Business Development

• Actively contribute to generating funds for the organization, particularly for evaluation and research projects. Form strategic partnerships with research institutes, universities, and consultants.
• Provide data and evidence input to a range of funding bids and donor reports to further support the development of the business.

External Engagement and Thought Leadership

• Seek opportunities to present evaluation and research findings in forums that will further VisionSpring’s vision and mission. Manage abstract submissions and represent VisionSpring in external forums.
• Develop publications and disseminate information on successful and promising approaches, lessons learned and other program results to program partners, donors and CSR clients, country governments, and other key stakeholders.
• Collaborate with Resource Mobilization and Marketing & Communications teams to share findings with key audiences.

Requirements

Essential

• A passion for putting data and evidence to use in the service of social good.
• Extensive formal training in quantitative and qualitative evaluation and research methods. This may come from an advanced degree in fields such as public health, social sciences, statistics, development studies — or it may come from other formal training courses if your background is in a different field.
• 5+ years of experience in monitoring, evaluation and research roles with evidence of career progression
• Deep expertise in either quantitative or qualitative research methods, plus fluency in the other. Experience of mixed-methods designs and integration of findings across data sources.
• Excellent data analysis skills – comfortable coding qualitative interviews, using pivot tables in Excel, and competence in at least one statistical software package (e.g. SPSS, Stata, R).
• Experience of communicating evaluation and research findings, for example through summary documents or published journal articles

Desirable

• Deep expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research methods, together with methods integration expertise
• Experience of working in an international development context
• Experience of working with philanthropic, institutional or CSR funders – e.g. preparing funding bids or completing funder reports
• Experience of working in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Bangladesh, or Vietnam
• Advanced Excel skills – proficient in the use of PowerQuery, PowerPivot and PowerBI
• Experience with Institutional Review Board (IRB) processes

Compensation

• Salary based on experience and education in line with VisionSpring salary benchmarking.
• Annual performance-based bonus.
• VisionSpring offers competitive benefits, including health insurance, gratuity funds, and generous vacation/personal time.