Notes
1 On his first day in office, President Joe Biden issued an order rescinding the Trump directive requiring federal agencies to share citizenship data with the Census Bureau.
2 The Democracy Funders Collaborative’s Census Subgroup initially consisted of Annie E. Casey Foundation, Bauman Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, Joyce Foundation, The JPB Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Wallace H. Coulter Foundation. Heising-Simons Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Unbound Philanthropy, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation joined the committee later, and Democracy Fund moved to a nonvoting role. Irvine Foundation and California Endowment also monitored meetings. Freedman Consulting provided significant logistical and editorial support starting in 2015, tapering off in 2019, and concluding in 2020. The committee continues today under the name Census Equity Initiative Steering Committee, with the same members, minus Democracy Fund, Kresge Foundation, and the two monitoring foundations.
3 For example, a GOTC plan had been in development for roughly one year; discussions about further developing it had taken place at both quarterly meetings and outside meetings. However, the plan was not put into place until participants at a quarterly meeting voted to accept it, and everyone had an equal vote.
4 Democracy Funders Collaborative, “The Fight Against the Citizenship Question: Ensuring Everyone Counts in the 2020 Census,” October 2021, https://funderscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/The-Fight-Against-the-Citizenship-Question_Case-Study_Final.pdf.
5 Democracy Funders Collaborative, “Census Appropriations Advocacy: A Surgical Strategy,” July 2021, https://funderscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/
Appropriations-Advocacy-Case-Study-Final.pdf.
6 Nicholas A. Jones, “What 2020 Census Results Tell Us About Persisting Problems with Separate Question on Race and Ethnicity,” US Census Bureau, presentation to the meeting of Census Equity Initiative and Funders’ Committee for the Civic Participation’s Census Initiative, February 16, 2022.
Arturo Vargas is the CEO of NALEO Educational Fund, a leading national Latino civic engagement organization, and an expert on census, having been involved in the past four decennial censuses and having served on Census Bureau national advisory committees from 2000 to 2019.
Gary D. Bass is a consultant and executive director emeritus of the Bauman Foundation and an affiliated professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. He chaired the census funder collaborative.
Karen K. Narasaki was a consultant to the Bauman Foundation and helped lead the census funder collaborative. She is a national civil rights lawyer with experience on three previous decennial censuses and was a commissioner for the US Commission on Civil Rights.