Views autocomplete with aggregation (and panels)
So the way to address this is actually easy, so sorry for having posted it. 

In case anyone else is having this issue...in the panel, instead of using the exposed filters for the view with aggregation, I used the exposed filters for the view that just provided a list of Funding instances. 

Then, in the settings for the view with aggregation there is no need to use autocomplete (just use Contains) - because I'm not displaying this exposed filter anymore.