Assessing Efforts to Support a Fair and Accurate 2020 Census
From the Democracy Funders Collaborative Census Subgroup, a working group of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP) that mobilizes philanthropy around a fair and accurate census, with a focus on historically undercounted communities.
Recognizing the importance of a fair and accurate count and building on learnings from the 2010 Census, philanthropic work to support the 2020 Census began in 2015, with a number of foundations coming together to develop an approach targeting historically undercounted
populations. This work would allow more funders to support the census though information sharing, collaboration around a single strategy, and streamlined aggregation and allocation of resources through pooled funds and aligned grantmaking strategies. These funders, meeting
under the banner of the Democracy Funders Collaborative, formed a Census Subgroup (the Subgroup) to tackle the work. What resulted was a multi-year national initiative that brought together a diverse array of national, regional, and local funders and census stakeholders. The
initiative was extraordinary in terms of the number and diversity of stakeholders, the multi pronged strategy, the resources raised, and the shared commitment to a fair and accurate census count.
