The financial support initially provided by Science Foundations like National Science Foundation (NSF), Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), since 2004 additional funding comes from the National Security Agency of USA (NSA) and Mathematical Association of America (MAA).
In 2016, a "data insights" problem was added, where teams are given access to database files and tasked with using them to answer a question.
These problems tend to be open-ended, and are drawn from all fields of science, business, and public policy.
Several guides containing advice and recommendations for teams and/or advisors have been published online or in print.
[4][5][6] Thousands of international teams of three undergraduates compete to produce original mathematical papers in response to one of two modelling problems.