“SJPCF, KCCF, ACF, CFCF, K4L, CoE, CB, QF, SS.”
At the start of my internship at Bean Research, I felt like I was learning a completely new language. Many conversations were full of acronyms like those listed above, and it was sometimes difficult to keep track of who was who, and what everything meant. But over time, it started to click. The acronyms started to represent real organisations, supporting real people, and driving wide-ranging and deep impact.
Across three months, I worked with nine Bean clients, each of whom supports a number of organisations, ranging from 15 to 500 grantees. The range of clients I supported was also huge: from foundations like St James’s Place Charitable Foundation (SJPCF) and Quilter Foundation, to corporate funds like CityFibre, charities like Key 4 Life and Second Stage, governmental projects like Cashback for Communities, and to funders, like the Church of England and the Army Central Fund.
Working across such a wide mix was both challenging and exciting, strengthening my ability to quickly adapt to different organisational contexts, priorities, and ways of working. Each client came with its own mission, priorities, and even its own ‘language.’ For some, like the Church of England or the Army Central Fund, I spent time understanding the terminology before being able to properly engage with the data. Additionally, I often balanced at least two or three different client projects across a three-day work week.
But by contributing to such a range, it became one of the most valuable parts of my internship. It meant I could contribute to a diverse set of projects, and ones that were at different stages of how Bean Research supports their clients. One of the highlights was participating in interviews we did with some staff members of Round 2 Partner organisations for King Charles Charitable Foundation (KCCF), including Birdlife International and Marine Conservation Society. Through these interviews, I got to listen to how people speak about their work: their pride in specific outcomes achieved, the challenges they faced, and the role funding played. It also gave me the chance to ask follow-up questions and deepen my understanding of their impact. I later attended a meeting with KCCF where these findings were shared with them directly.
I also spent time working on St James’s Place Charitable Foundation’s 2025 Impact Report. This involved analysing the individual monitoring and evaluation forms, drawing out the numbers and identifying the case studies that captured valuable impact and the difference the funding was making. Reading through hundreds of examples of individual stories brought to life the scale of their impact. I also had the opportunity to meet with SJP staff, which gave me important insight into how these reports are initially presented, discussed, and ultimately used or shared.
The CityFibre Community Fund work provided a unique opportunity to further understand how Bean works with them as an Evaluation Partner – from supporting grantees in their application process, to reviewing applications and making suggestions to CityFibre on which applications should be accepted, to capturing the outcomes from the organisations, and ultimately, writing the annual impact reports. While my internship was only three months, I was lucky to be able to support throughout the entire process – supporting the impact report from 2025, and re-launching the fund for 2026 applications.
Alongside the client work, one of the things I appreciated most was how supported I felt by the team. Weekly, I had a check-in with Arani, who consistently followed up and asked if there were any specific clients I wanted to work with, or any particular skills or tasks I wanted to develop my experience in. As a wider team, we had weekly meetings structured as an ‘ask’ and a ‘tell’ – giving each member an opportunity to ask questions to the team, learn from another, and share any successes.
One weekly meeting that particularly stood out was a focused session on theories of changes and impact frameworks, where each member shared an impact framework they had developed, walking me through the context, the challenges, and the process in getting to that framework. It was extremely valuable to hear, and I was so thankful they provided me with this opportunity.
Now, as my internship comes to an end, the notes in my notebook continue to include several acronyms. However, now, I can speak about each organisation’s work confidently and can reflect on the individual impact each organisation has made, remembering the hundreds of individual case studies that I read about from each grantee, and the writing I did for their work to be incorporated across the several impact and annual reports I supported.
I would like to express my gratitude to the entire Bean team for how welcoming they were, and how willing they were to support my learning and growth across this internship. It has made a huge difference to how much I’ve been able to take away from this experience.
Viviane Privat
