Shamier Settle, Policy Analyst with the Fiscal Policy Institute, wrote this article in the Gotham Gazette about the census count and what the numbers mean for New York.
FPI started its census work in 2018 with this report, which estimates of how much funding community based organizations would need to conduct outreach for the census count in 2020. That same year FPI also began highlighting the importance of including investments in the census in the state budget. Through their participation on the steering committee of New York Counts 2020, FPI advocated for community based organizations across the state to receive funding from the state by testifying at a public hearing, speaking at rallies, and giving presentations to community groups.
In addition to their work in New York, the Fiscal Policy Institute worked with the Leadership Council on Human Rights and State Voices to make our estimation available for all 50 states. Through this collaboration we wrote Preparing for the 2020 Census: Estimating Outreach Costs for Hard-to-Count Communities, and we made this excel spreadsheet which allows users to choose a state and estimate how much their state would need to allocate to community based organizations (using the same methodology that we used in our 2018 report). Many states like Connecticut, New Jersey, and Texas used these documents and were successful in allocating funding for community-based outreach.
Preparing for the census count is an effort that takes years of planning. We are hopeful that the lessons learned from the 2020 census count will be applied in just a few short years as New York takes on the challenge of preparing for the count, once again.