Business Development Manager - Africa at VisionSpring

What You'll Do

Donor Engagement & Fundraising

• Cultivate and nurture a portfolio of funders, including governments, institutional foundations, corporate and individual donors, by expanding long-term relationships with VisionSpring’s philanthropic investors and building new partnerships with prospective donors.
• Support the continual improvement of our organizational donor stewardship practices to maintain the effectiveness and integrity of VisionSpring collaborations. Proactively communicate with donors and look for ways to engage philanthropic investors in order to keep them connected to our work.
• Ensure donors receive timely, comprehensive, and accurate reports.
• Prepare thoughtfully what can be complex and multi-layered proposals and requests for renewal funding, working collaboratively with program/field staff on proposal writing, objectives, indicator development, and budgeting.
• Develop and monitor the opportunity pipeline and calendar for punctual execution of proposals, reports, trips to the field, and other forms of engagement.
• Leverage VisionSpring’s Salesforce customer relationship management system to track written communications, meetings, submissions, and gift processing, with strict attention to data integrity.
• Process incoming donations (via check and online giving) and ensure all donors receive a timely acknowledgment.

Strategic Planning

• Actively participate in departmental strategy development and execution.
• Work with the Africa team and Global development team to design and implement annual business development plans and budgets.
• Report on key metrics to the VisionSpring executive leadership and other stakeholders.

Requirements

• A minimum of 10 - 15 years of professional experience.
• Demonstrated success managing a portfolio of funders with increasing responsibility and revenue performance.
• Prior experience with relationship management, including working with diverse and sophisticated thinkers.
• Prior experience with programmatically complex proposal writing (preferably international development proposals focused on Africa), pitch deck development, or business plan writing.
• Demonstrated interest in social enterprise models and desire to learn how to articulate and share VisionSpring’s unique approach.
• Extraordinary follow-through, attention to detail and deadlines, and a strong personal sense of accountability.
• Must meet the highest standards of ethics, with a demonstrated capacity for discretion and for handling sensitive information with care.
• A strong commitment to respectful collaboration with colleagues from diverse backgrounds.
• Experience developing budgets.
• Aptitude in Microsoft Office, especially Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• The ability to travel 30-40% of your time, across Africa and occasionally globally.
• Experience synthesizing program updates to generate evocative and compelling reports.
• Proficiency with CRMs such as Salesforce.