It is tempting, in any intermediary business, to measure success by the number of opportunities in the pipeline. A long list looks impressive in a presentation. It is also, more often than not, a sign that the screening has not happened yet.
We deliberately measure ourselves differently. A pipeline of a handful of properly screened, well-structured opportunities is worth more — to funders, to sponsors, and to our own credibility — than a long list of loosely vetted possibilities. Every opportunity we put forward carries an implicit statement: we have looked at this closely, and we believe it can stand up to scrutiny. That statement only means something if it is rarely made carelessly.
This discipline has a direct, practical cost. It means turning away projects that may well be genuine but that we cannot, within reasonable time and resource, verify to the standard we require. It means smaller deal flow than a less selective approach would produce. We accept that cost deliberately, because the alternative — a longer list with a weaker average — would erode the one asset that makes the gateway model work at all: trust.
For funders evaluating any intermediary, the size of their pipeline is far less informative than their track record of saying no. Ask not how many deals they can show you — ask how many they turned away, and why. The answer to that question tells you almost everything you need to know about whether their 'yes' is worth anything.
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