Grant Makers Commit Millions to Help Ensure Accurate Census

As the 2010 census nears its official start in March, nonprofit leaders are raising serious concerns about the government’s ability to achieve an accurate tally in this once-a-decade population count.

In response, foundations have poured tens of millions of dollars into nonprofit census efforts, but many nonprofit leaders say much more is needed.

The stakes are enormous: The data will be used not only to apportion House seats and reshape Congressional districts but also to parcel out more than $400-billion each year in federal funds—some $4-trillion over the next decade—for education, health care, and other critical social services. The national per-person average for annual federal funds allocated on the basis of census data is now $1,415, according to the Brookings Institution—that is, every person counted will “bring in” $14,150 over the next decade. And those figures don’t even take into account the billions of dollars that flow from state and local apportionments based on census data.

By the same token, schools, inner-city health clinics, literacy and job-training programs, and other crucial social-service providers stand to lose that money in an undercount.

Yet charity observers say that what was already an unwieldy process has worsened with the recession, the home-foreclosure crisis, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes and apartments into temporary quarters, making it difficult for census workers to reach them.

Another issue at play is what the Naleo Educational Fund, a Los Angeles Latino-rights group, calls “the increasingly xenophobic environment surrounding the immigration debate.”

“The population is more diverse, speaking more languages, and we are in an environment that’s less hospitable to immigrants, who are already difficult to count,” says Terri Ann Lowenthal, a consultant in Stamford, Conn., who works with nonprofit and other groups on census-related issues. “Plus, this is the first post-9/11 census, and people are more concerned about their privacy and sharing information.”

Nonprofit leaders hope their organizations can serve as “trusted voices” in neighborhoods dominated by people who are likely to be left out, helping convince them that it is safe and important to participate in the census.

“Make no mistake—the census is the preeminent civil-rights issue of 2010,” says Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference Education Fund, in Washington.

His organization is running ads in English, Chinese, and Spanish on 1,500 buses as part of an eight-city campaign to encourage people to fill out their census forms.

Nonprofit Support

While precise figures are hard to come by, the Census Bureau estimates that the 2000 census undercounted—or “missed”—at least 6.4 million people, the overwhelming majority of them minorities, poor people, and children.

In response, nonprofit efforts are stressing activities designed to reach the nation’s growing Hispanic population, recent immigrants, African-Americans, low-income renters, homeless people, and other types of people who have historically been undercounted.

To help persuade Americans to participate, the U.S. Census Bureau began a $133-million multimedia advertising blitz in mid-January.

Yet charity leaders say that local service and civil-rights groups have a distinct advantage in motivating hard-to-count people to participate.

At least one national network has formed to promote such work—the Funders Census Initiative, an ad hoc group that advocates greater involvement in the 2010 Census among grant makers and their grantees.

Members include the Ford Foundation, which has allocated $11-million since summer 2008 to 26 grantees and is considering giving another $4-million to some 17 groups, and the Open Society Institute, which gave slightly more than $1-million in 2009 for direct census activities and has also increased general-support awards to current grantees that work to encourage people to participate in the upcoming census.

To date, the Funders Census Initiative’s activities have included helping grant makers draft requests for proposals and assess grant applications and providing grantees with census materials and assistance in navigating the Census Bureau’s bureaucracy.

Nonprofit leaders hope to drum up additional philanthropic dollars in the coming months.

“There are so many foundations supporting activities like health care for the poor and affordable housing and community development,” says Ms. Lowenthal. “Well, there are billions of dollars in federal funds and billions more in state funds that are allocated to local groups using census data.”

Adds Bridgette Rongitsch, national director of the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network, in St. Paul, “Even if you’re having to stretch your resources some, the dividends will far outweigh that extra effort. We certainly don’t want any money left on the table.”

Ms. Rongitsch’s group has held free monthly Webinars since July that show nonprofit organizations how to integrate census-related activities into their other activities.

The events have “maxed out” at up to 200 participants, she says, and the presentation is now available for download on the group’s Web site.

The network is also planning state-specific Webinars, and in January unveiled new materials for groups that work on homelessness, immigration, criminal justice, and other relevant issues.

Tough Cases

Reaching people from a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds remains a key challenge.

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a New York advocacy group, unveiled its Twenty10 Project in August, beginning with the release of census-education materials in English and 13 other languages, including Arabic, Khmer, Urdu, and Vietnamese. The fact sheets provide basic information about the importance of participating in the census, including language-assistance options.

Glenn D. Magpantay, a staff lawyer and director of the project, says the organization also has been contacting regional census officials to ensure that the hiring of census-outreach staff members adequately reflects the ethnic composition of the neighborhoods where they will work.

The fund’s largest census-related effort will focus on confidentiality. “We need to be sure that the census protects the anonymity of undocumented immigrants,” says Mr. Magpantay.

Officials at the Naleo Educational Fund voice similar concerns. Arturo Vargas, the executive director, says that while Hispanics now constitute the second-largest ethnic group in the United States, they are increasingly dispersed around the country rather than concentrated only in California, Texas, and a few other regions as in the past.

And in these new locales, says Mr. Vargas, Hispanics may shy away from anything government-related if they don’t have accurate information on confidentiality and civil-rights issues.

To counter this, his group’s census-education campaign—dubbed Ya Es Hora! Hágase Contar! (It’s Time! Make Yourself Count!)—includes a focus on geographic pockets in Georgia, North Carolina, and elsewhere in the South that have growing numbers of Hispanic residents.

To convey its message, Naleo is relying primarily on a network of small, local groups nationwide and on Entravision, impreMedia, and Univision, the country’s three predominant Spanish-language media enterprises, which are running both television and radio ads.

But the effort is still fraught with problems, says Mr. Vargas. While the Census Bureau will mail out bilingual questionnaires for the first time—“something Latino groups have been asking for for 40 years”—they will be sent out only in areas where the bureau estimates Hispanics make up 20 percent of the population.

Mr. Vargas anticipates communication problems in those areas where many Latinos now live but where they don’t reach the 20-percent threshold.

In these new pockets, he adds, there are often no local groups that serve Latinos. “They don’t yet have an infrastructure,” says Mr. Vargas, “and there are no trusted messengers.”