Associate Director
About Bean Research
Bean Research is an independent research, evaluation and learning consultancy. We help charities, foundations, funders and corporates understand and strengthen their social impact, working across sport for development, criminal justice, employability, and arts and heritage. Our clients range from The Rayne Foundation, Nando’s, King Charles III Charitable Fund and a range of Corporate Foundations to many grassroots charities.
We are a social enterprise, a Living Wage Employer and a certified B Corp. Our BCorp assessors particularly highlighted that our evaluation and Social Return on Investment work consistently leads clients to deepen their social impact: 83% of clients confirm they had made improvements as a direct result. We are rigorous but never dull, and we see our job as translating evidence into something genuinely useful. If you want to work somewhere that lives its values, this is it.
Why This Role, Why Now
Bean has grown, then deliberately paused to build stronger systems and foundations. We are now ready to grow again, and this Associate Director role is a real opportunity to shape both the work and the business. It is a senior role combining leadership of complex, high-impact evaluation programmes, the development of client relationships and new business, and the development of a high-performing team. You will work closely with the Director, with genuine influence and the autonomy to make the role your own.
Role Overview
You will lead the development and delivery of research and evaluation projects, ensuring clients feel supported, informed and delighted throughout. You will bring strategic insight, methodological expertise in both process and outcome evaluation, and a collaborative spirit to every stage of the work.
You will play a key role in strengthening Bean’s external voice and connections – sharing our expertise and perspective on helping charities and funders to evaluate, learn and communicate their impact more effectively. You will also play a key role in strengthening Bean’s internal capability – supporting the team, the Director, managing colleagues and helping to grow our offer, particularly in supporting charities and funders to evaluate, learn and communicate their impact more effectively.
Every role at Bean Research fuels our mission to be the trusted learning and evaluation partner of choice, helping organisations frame, evaluate and amplify social value with confidence and clarity. Everyone plays a part in delivering work that is rigorous, reflective and genuinely useful while sustaining Bean as a high-quality, values-led organisation.
Responsibilities
Research, Evaluation & Learning
Project Development: Lead the design, development and execution of research and evaluation projects, defining objectives and creating project plans.
Data Analysis and Reporting: Oversee the analysis of research data and preparation of comprehensive reports. Ensure findings are clear and engaging to clients and stakeholders.
Quality Assurance: Champion high quality standards across all projects, maintaining ethical and methodological rigour. Continually seek opportunities to exceed client expectations and strengthen Bean’s processes and brand.
Industry Knowledge: Stay informed with the latest research, social impact methodologies, emerging industry trends, and best practices. Share insights with the team to help embed new approaches and enhance our overall capabilities.
B Corp Commitment: Actively support and further improve Bean’s own environmental and social performance.
Working With Clients
Client Management: Build strong, trusting relationships with clients, creating long term learning and evaluation partnerships. Act as their main point of contact, ensuring clarity, responsiveness, and the highest quality experience throughout the project.
Project Coordination: Own and deliver project coordination and evaluation activities through our new bespoke project management system, fieldwork logistics and client communications, ensuring projects run smoothly and to schedule.
Bean Operations
Business Development: Identify and pursue new business opportunities from generating leads to developing compelling proposals. Work with the team to position Bean’s services and projects creatively and confidently in the market.
Team Leadership: Lead, support and develop the team, modelling Bean’s values, providing senior guidance across projects, and fostering a positive, inclusive and high-performing culture.
Advocate and Thought Leadership: Be a vocal advocate for Bean and for social value, active on LinkedIn and across the wider sector, and help position Bean as a thought leader through articles, insights, conferences and panels, supporting the team to build their profiles too.
Bean’s 5 Pillars of Success: Own and deliver at least one pillar project each quarter, aligned with Bean’s strategic priorities and agreed with the Director. This might include work on processes, positioning, client excellence, potential business, or how we best partner with new leads or people.
Candidate Profile
You are an experienced evaluation or social research professional who likes to crack on. This is a hands-on role: you lead and deliver the work yourself rather than handing it to a team, while supporting colleagues and managing client relationships. You have enough depth to lead with confidence, but you stay close to the detail, work collaboratively, and are excited to grow with a small, ambitious organisation. You combine methodological rigour with commercial instinct, and you are at your best translating evidence into something clients can actually use. Most of our direct clients are not evaluators, so clarity in translation matters alongside rigour.
Essential
Significant experience designing and delivering quantitative and qualitative research and evaluation, from framing and methodology through to analysis and reporting.
A research agency or consultancy background, or evaluation experience within a charity or funder and a genuine desire to move into a consultancy setting.
Enough depth to lead projects, manage client relationships and support the team, combined with a hands-on, collaborative style and a real appetite to grow with a small organisation.
A rigorous researcher who is also commercially minded and genuinely interested in business development.
Confidence developing logic models, theories of change and evaluation frameworks, and using these to feed into strategic development of services and funding.
The ability to translate complex evaluation for non-specialist audiences, clearly and engagingly.
A proven track record of building trusted client relationships and turning them into repeat and expanded work.
Experience leading, line-managing and developing colleagues, and modelling a positive, inclusive team culture.
The drive and organisation to manage multiple priorities at pace, take the initiative and deliver to time, quality and budget.
The right to work in the UK.
Desirable
Knowledge of, or networks within, the funder community, for example the Association of Charitable Funders or London Funders.
Experience of government-funded work, for example across central government departments, National Lottery funded organisations or Sport England.
SROI or value for money experience, and an appetite to help grow this area of our work.
An established external profile and network across evaluation, charities and funders.
Willingness to travel for fieldwork and client meetings as required.
Our Values
Everyone at Bean brings our values to life every day. For this role in particular, we are looking for someone who recognises themselves in them:
Broad-minded: you welcome diverse perspectives and design work that is sensitive to context, power and equity.
Enthusiastic: you bring energy, optimism and ownership to every project, client and conversation.
Adaptable: you respond constructively to uncertainty and balance rigour with pragmatism.
Navigators: you are curious, evidence-led and always looking for the most effective way forward.
Scrupulous: you hold high standards of accuracy, ethics and transparency.
Benefits
In return, Bean commits to clear expectations, a supportive and high-quality working environment, and real investment in your development, including a performance and objectives review every six months and an in-depth annual review with a Director.
Salary: c.£65,000 to £70,000, dependent on experience.
Flexible working: This is a full-time role, with 3 days a week in our office as standard and the rest worked flexibly. We know flexibility matters, so we are open to discussing arrangements that work for you and for Bean, including, for the right person, a four-day week.
Learning and development: up to 3 training days a year, plus sector events, peer learning and mentoring.
Volunteering: 2 paid volunteering days each year.
Wellbeing and inclusion: we actively support staff wellbeing, inclusion and work-life balance.
Annual leave: 25 days pro-rata plus bank holidays.
Pension: NEST (opt-out).
Culture: a social enterprise, Living Wage Employer and certified B Corp, and a member of the Better Business Alliance and Anthropy.
Networks: through our Director’s roles on the UK Evaluation Society (UKES) and ETAP, you will be close to where evaluation and government policy are heading.
How to Apply
To apply, please click on apply below. We are an inclusive employer building a diverse team, and we particularly welcome applications from people currently underrepresented in our sector, those who have come to evaluation through different career routes or lived experience, and people at different stages of their career. If you need any adjustments to take part in our process, please let us know.
