Foundations and nonprofit organizations are taking an unusually active role in this year’s U.S. Census, spending millions of dollars on campaigns to bolster participation from minority and low-income people, National Public Radio reports.

The Open Society Institute and the Ford, Knight, and Silicon Valley foundations are among the groups working with local organizations to reach people who have traditionally been hard to count, such as the homeless, or those who move frequently or are suspicious of the government.

The decennial population count, a major factor in determining distribution of federal aid, will “have a huge impact on the population of folks that we work with,” said Ellen Alberding, president of the Joyce Foundation, which is supporting Illinois’s “Count Me In” campaign.

Read more about census-related nonprofit efforts in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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