Based on its success with BRAC, VisionSpring has leveraged partnerships with over 300 organizations around the world. Yet even if it reaches its audacious goal of selling 10 million pairs of glasses by 2020, it would still represent only a tiny fraction of the total need. For vast, long‐standing societal challenges, even a highly successful organization can usually only make a small dent. And, as such problems typically lie at the intersection of market and policy failures, any one sector only holds part of the solution. In the case of eyeglasses, market forces have encouraged companies to focus on more lucrative, affluent customers, leaving the poor and disadvantaged underserved. At the same time, government policies and aid organizations have prioritized more acute and deadly diseases. Thus, this simple and inexpensive intervention, which can increase productivity by 35% and generate $23 of economic impact for every dollar spent, has fallen through the cracks.

As the organization grew, Jordan and his VisionSpring colleague Liz Smith saw an opportunity to address barriers beyond their enterprise, by bringing government, the industry, and nonprofits together to tackle distribution and access problems more systemically. Thus, the EYElliance was born.

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