In exactly one year from today, the U.S. Census Bureau will begin counting the number of people living in the United States. The data collected by the decennial census are used to determine the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for federal, state, local, and tribal governments each year, establish a state’s number of congressional seats in the House of Representatives, and even influence where and how businesses run their organizations.

There are a number of challenges facing the upcoming U.S. Census, and one of the most daunting ones will be ensuring every child in America is properly counted. This is why Partnership for America’s Children (PAC) is working to coordinate a get-out-the-count effort for specific hard-to-count populations, such as young children. PAC is supported by the Census 2020 Project, a funding initiative of the New Venture Fund that is supported by the Foundation’s Community and Opportunity program.

To learn more about the undercount of young children, we invite you to read PAC’s blog post, and to watch this short video explaining what’s at stake for our children in the upcoming Census.

To learn more about the different ways in which the Foundation is supporting initiatives that are working to ensure a fair and accurate Census, please click here. More recently, the Foundation also made grants to support projects that are working to ensure the participation of historically hard-to-count populations, including an initiative by California Children and Families Foundation to train and mobilize organizations throughout California that serve children birth to age 5.