Is the Math Mathing?
Before we talk about impact, let’s talk about loss.
Most funding failures don’t happen after money is disbursed.
They happen before, at the design stage, and compound over time.
So before TELEP Network enters the room, here are a few questions worth asking.
The Math Before the Grant
Think back to your last call.
How many applications were ineligible on arrival?
How many staff hours disappeared into clarifications, exceptions, and interpretation emails?
How many strong grassroots organizations walked away because the rules didn’t match their reality?
How many projects were later described as “learning experiences”, when the issue was structural misalignment from the start?
It’s not a question of bad luck, but of cost.
Turning Risk Into a Ledger.
Cost of a Level 1 Diagnostic
vs.
Cost of Not Knowing
Cost of not knowing often includes:
appeals, complaints, and extended review cycles
internal staff overload and hidden time costs
misaligned portfolios that underperform quietly
extractive reporting burdens that erode trust
“innovation” initiatives that look good but don’t land
reputational friction with partners and the field
None of this shows up neatly in budgets.
All of it shows up later.
You don’t need perfect prevention for this to make sense.
Preventing one structurally misaligned decision, one call that creates downstream friction, rework, or failure, is often enough for a diagnostic to pay for itself several times over.
We are not talking about eliminating risk.
It’s about seeing it early, when it’s still cheap to address.
A Simple, Conservative Comparison.
The most expensive grant is not the one you don’t fund.
It’s the one you fund while believing it serves a value it actually betrays.
That kind of loss doesn’t show up as a line item, but it accumulates: financially, institutionally, reputationally.
The Level 1 Diagnostic exists upstream, before commitments harden, before narratives settle, before correction becomes expensive.
It is priced against avoidable loss, not projected impact.
That’s the math.
One Uncomfortable Truth.
The Level 1 Diagnostic doesn’t tell you what to fund, it doesn’t score organizations, it doesn’t promise impact.
It asks a simpler question:
Before committing capital, do we actually understand the risks we’re designing into the system?
If the answer is “maybe,” then the math might not be mathing.