Dear Colleagues,
There is perhaps no better evidence of the power of demographic data than the number of strategies in Project 2025 aimed at reducing access to it and undermining public confidence about it.
Here are just a few key examples:
- Eliminating key demographic data collection efforts by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on race and gender in the workplace (pg. 581).
- Limiting National Institute for Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research on gender identity (pg. 462).
- Politicizing federal data collection by replacing career statisticians at the Census Bureau with political appointees at the director and management levels (pg. 679) and eliminating community advisory committees deemed “hostile to conservative interests” (pg. 666), reducing the budget and eliminating annual surveys (pg. 680).
- Pre-emptively gerrymandering representation in congress by adding a citizenship question to the 2030 Census—likely leading to severe undercounts of immigrant communities in a time of heightened fear, while shifting Census outreach efforts to favor conservative areas. (pg. 680)
- Rolling back recent improvements to race and ethnicity questions that would have created a more representative count such as allowing people to multi-select race and ethnicity along with the inclusion of Middle Eastern/North African as an ethnic identity (pg. 680).
- Removing American Community Survey (ACS) questions deemed “too intrusive,” (pg. 680) while at the same time pushing for more intrusive federal data collection on abortion, requiring states to report detailed information on abortion procedures (pg. 455).
- Filing a lawsuit against the state of Illinois over SB2930 a new state law that promotes board transparency for nonprofits that regrant more than $1M.
WFN’s specific area of work to expand public access to demographic data through community-built projects may seem like a low priority amid the past two weeks in the U.S. which have included immigration raids at schools and churches, sudden freezes in lifesaving aid, and the purges in the federal workforce that target already institutionally marginalized populations.
But in response to these threats to public transparency and accountability, it is more important than ever for funders and donors to invest in alternative public data infrastructure to track and mitigate the impact of the U.S. Administration’s policies while also supporting targeted communities and grassroots organizations working to advance social justice. We are grateful for the infrastructure that Candid has built to allow nonprofits and foundations to publicly access demographic data in a way that is standardized, shared with consent, and freely accessible.
That’s why we encourage all nonprofits and funders in the U.S. to join 77,000 nonprofits who have already shared demographic data about their organization’s staff, leadership, and board through their GuideStar/Candid profile, and work towards operationalizing it as an annual process. This small action helps all of us understand the contours of the social sector landscape we are working in and track the impact of our efforts to advance equity and justice for all.
My hope is that we will be able to see in the data that philanthropy responded to this moment not with fear, but with rapid response funds, abundantly resourcing targeted communities with no strings attached.
Onward,
Sara Keilholtz
Women’s Funding Network
Director of Data and Strategic Insights