Data collected during the 2020 United States Census will be used to determine how more than $675 billion in federal funds will be distributed to tribal, state and local governments.
“A lot of the federal government grants and aide to non-profits are determined by population and so a correct census with the right number of people in the county or in our regions really helps us,” Fannin County Family Connection Executive Director Sherry Morris said. “There’s federal funding that comes down to the states, it’s usually between $2,000 and $2,500 per person, so an accurate count is important to make sure that we get all of the funding we need for our services.”
Family Connection and other Fannin County non-profits and social service organizations frequently use census data to help secure funds.
“Every grant that I do, I have to prepare what the county data is, the county residency and the county makeup of demographics and ethnicity, how many we have that are Caucasian, how many are Spanish, how many mixed race and that sort of thing,” Morris said. “So almost for every grant that we have those sort of numbers are required by the grantor.”
According to Morris, it is easy for people to overlook the importance of the census. She said, “Because the census is only once every 10 years and it’s only nine to 10 questions, you can forget that you did that 10 years ago. So it makes it hard and people move and the idea that it’s important kind of goes away.
“Also, because it is census year, there are other groups that are putting out lots of questionnaires and that type of things and they will call it, their questionnaire or their survey, ‘census.’ It’s not really the U.S. Census.”
According to census worker Heather Thompson, some organizations have already sent out their own surveys, as Morris said, and caused people to believe they have already taken the census. She urged people to remember that the U.S. Census will not take place until March and April next year and that it will be labeled as the United States Census.
According to the census schedule, an invitation to respond online to the census will be mailed between March 12 and March 20. Every household that does not respond will receive reminders and eventually a paper questionnaire.
“This is the first year that the census, you can actually complete it online,” Morris said. “The first card you get will actually have a number and you can go online and enter that number for your household number and complete the census online.
“It’s the first time ever in the history of the census that it’s going to be done that way and we have a lot of our clients that do not have internet access at home so we will have a computer setup, as well as someone trained, to help them to be able to get to the correct place on the internet so that they make sure they’re filling out the correct census. We’ll have that all the way through the census taking time in March and April.”
Morris stressed the importance of accurately getting a snapshot of the population stating, “It’s important that we get an accurate count because the funding that comes back to the state and comes back to our county, that is our tax dollars at work. Our residents here, who are working and paying tax, they’ve already paid that tax in so we need to make sure that we get our fair share back so that the programs that we need here in the county, the services that we need are adequately funded.”