Leaders of the Massachusetts Census Equity Fund 2020 unveiled their plans for a three-year project to promote an accurate count of all residents in the Commonwealth at a funder briefing held at the Boston Foundation on February 7, 2018.
Census Equity
The decennial census is a constitutionally-mandated count of all US residents with far-reaching implications. Local, state, and federal governments, businesses, nonprofits, and foundations all rely on census data to allocate funding, measure impact, and make strategic decisions around service delivery and economic development.
In FY15, the federal government relied on census data to distribute nearly $600 billion to states – $16 billion to Massachusetts –for programs including Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, Section 8, CHIP, Head Start and WIC. Many of the communities served by our State’s nonprofits would be hard hit by an inaccurate count in 2020.
Read more about the challenges to an accurate count – engaging historically ‘hard-to-count’ populations, and implementing the first all-digital count – in the Massachusetts Census Equity Fund 2020’s informational flyer.
Do not take the Census for granted. For more information, contact Amy Segal Shorey at GMA Foundations or reach out to one of the Fund’s lead members – Access Strategies Fund, Associated Grant Makers, The Hyams Foundation, The Herman & Frieda L. Miller Foundation, or Episcopal City Mission.
Resources
Associated Grant Makers has shared speaker Terri Ann Lowenthal‘s presentation as well as a number of other resources on their website.
Updated post.