Funders Join Forces in New York State to Push for Accurate Census Count

The New York Community Trust has agreed to host a New York State Grantmakers for Census Equity affinity fund, reports David Gentile in NYN Media. The foundation affinity group aims “to raise $1 to $2 million to help mobilize local and statewide efforts to make the 2020 Census accurate and fair,” said a trust spokesperson. The New York Foundation has also agreed to contribute to the fund, as have other (unnamed) funders. Patricia Swann, senior program officer at The New York Community Trust, announced the group’s formation during Philanthropy New York’s annual meeting. As NPQ has noted, concern is mounting regarding whether the 2020 census will accurately count US residents. Early questions were raised in the spring of 2017, when John Thompson, a 27-year veteran who had led the agency since 2013, suddenly resigned. Part of the backdrop was budgetary; Republicans were pressing for the budget for the 2020 Census to be identical to 2010, even though, as a former Capitol Hill staffer told Tara Bahrampour of the Washington Post, “They’re not accounting for inflation; they’re not accounting for the 30 million more Americans, for the fact that people don’t have hard [telephone] lines anymore. And you’re going to do the census for the same amount of money? That’s not possible.” And 2010 Census funding itself was far less than in 2000. The underfunding in 2010 led to an undercount of almost one million young children, reports Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. Gentile adds, “The problem appears set to worsen in 2020.” The design of the census form also affects the count. NPQ’s Marty Levine notes that the 2010 census resulted in an estimated undercount of Latinx residents by 1.5 percent and an overcount of whites by 0.8 percent, yet the same form will be used in 2020. Gentile adds, “The Trump administration has called for changes to the 2020 Census that some believe could have devastating effects on its accuracy…These include the reinsertion of a question on citizenship status and a shift towards submitting census data online.”