On March 4, the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP) joined 160 funders, practitioners, and census advocates on a letter to the Office of Management and Budget related to federal data collection on race and ethnicity. The letter notes, in part, that the signers:
“are writing to urge the Office of Management Budget (OMB) to move forward expeditiously with the “unfinished business” of revising the standards for federal data on race and ethnicity. We believe this revision is critical to ensuring that the U.S. Census Bureau can fulfill its mission to produce full, fair, and accurate data on our nation’s population and economy. The revision is also essential for the Administration’s efforts to improve our federal data collection infrastructure and advance equity in federal action. . . . The Bureau has conducted research since at least 2010 which indicates that the wording and format of the separate race and ethnicity questions do not align with how many residents of our nation self-identify, and results in inaccurate or incomplete Census data.”
This effort to update the race and ethnicity standards is a prerequisite to modernizing the questions on the decennial census and American Community Survey (ACS). FCCP, through its Funders Census Initiative (FCI), will continue to partner with funders and practitioners on critical policy and operations issues like this to ensure a fair and accurate 2030 Census and ACS. Ongoing funder engagement on these issues is critical, which is why FCI developed a 10-Year Blueprint for Philanthropic Census Engagement.
Read the letter here.