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Some i3 Winners Still Scrambling for Grant Match

Nonprofit groups and school districts that overcame fierce competition for a slice of the $650 million federal Investing in Innovation Fund —including some of the largest and best-known players in education reform—are racing to meet Wednesday’s deadline for the matching private funds grantees must have in hand to receive the money.

A number of finalists for the “i3” aid had hoped to find help from a consortium of more than 40 funders, including such big names as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Some grant winners say they expected that one or more foundations would contact them to offer matching grants after they were picked for awards of up to $50 million from the U.S. Department of Education.

But that didn’t happen in many cases. Now, some finalists—including the Baltimore-based Success for All Foundation, which is slated for one of the four roughly $50 million “scale up” grants intended for proven programs—find themselves scrambling just...