Two years after the U.S. Department of Education awarded $650 million in Investing in Innovation grants, some of the winners are still facing financial uncertainty. Other grantees have also encountered problems with matching funds coming through, and some nonprofit grantees have been forced to contribute their own money to match the initial amount. For its part, the Education Department has lessened the matching-fund requirements, but is less clear on possible outcomes for the grantees that have run into financial problems. Those developments have raised questions about the competition's structure, including calls by some observers for the awards to be opened up to the for-profit sector. In August 2010, the Education Department awarded 49 five-year grants to school districts, nonprofit organizations, and universities, ranging from $3 million to $50 million each. The grants were intended to help scale up education programs with proven outcomes or develop promising ones. The terms of the competition, which was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, required the winners to raise 20 percent of their awards in matching funds from the private sector, such as philanthropies or individual donors, and to do so in about five weeks. The requirement set off a scramble--many grantees did not secure the 20 percent of their grants needed until the final days before the deadline. The Education Department had reached out to the philanthropic community about i3, and an online registry created by a group of major foundations and managed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation aimed to match grantees and funders.