How Foundations Are Seeking to Improve the Accuracy of the 2010 Census: a Sampling of New Grants

California Community Foundation (Los Angeles): $60,000 to the Muslim Public Affairs Council Foundation (Los Angeles) to encourage Arab-Americans in Los Angeles County to participate in the census.

Cleveland Foundation: $75,000 to the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (Columbus) to work with the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network to promote census-related activities among nonprofit groups in the Cleveland metropolitan area..ng Cleveland-area nonprofit groups.

Ford Foundation (New York): $124,000 to the Progressive Technology Project (Minneapolis) for two projects to strengthen the ability of community-organizing groups to effectively use technology during the 2010 census process, including a database that multiple groups can use to track their efforts.

Michigan Nonprofit Association (Lansing): $15,000 to the Michigan Citizen Education Fund (Kalamazoo) for census-awareness activities in neighborhoods that have high numbers of home foreclosures, housing vacancies, and low-income renters.

James Irvine Foundation (San Francisco): $250,000 to California Rural Legal Assistance (San Francisco) for training sessions and local outreach designed to increase the census participation of residents of disadvantaged, rural areas in California.

Joyce Foundation (Chicago): $50,000 to the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Fund (Madison) to work with the Wisconsin Civic Engagement Project to achieve a more accurate census count among low-income people in the state.

Mitchell Kapor Foundation (San Francisco): $10,000 to Just Cause Oakland (Calif.) for census-outreach efforts conducted by this membership organization that represents tenants and other low-income people in East and West Oakland.

Open Society Institute (New York): $125,000 to the National Congress of American Indians (Washington) for its campaign to promote an accurate census count in tribal communities.

William Penn Foundation (Philadelphia): $80,000 to Social Compact (Washington) to help the City of Philadelphia submit a challenge to the U.S. Census Bureau regarding the bureau’s estimate of the city’s population, and to prepare for the 2010 census.

Public Welfare Foundation (Washington): $200,000 to the Prison Policy Initiative (Northampton, Mass.) for a public-education and advocacy campaign to oppose the Census Bureau’s practice of counting incarcerated people as residents of the towns in which they are imprisoned rather than as residents of their “home communities.”

—Marty Michaels