For an area as small as a neighborhood, the Census that is conducted every ten years is the only publicly-available source of demographic data that also provides comparable national data. For-profit companies produce annual updated estimates of the Census data, and we checked these out. But we found that they were not more accurate than the old census data itself. [For details regarding our analysis of commercial estimates, please fill out a request through Ask Allison—link will close window.]
Moreover, a number of grant
writing experts suggest that Census 2000 is the data source that federal funders
prefer to see in grant proposals, despite its age. So Census 2000 is still the
best source of neighborhood-level demographic data for use by nonprofit organizations.
When you're writing a grant, we recommend prefacing this data with the words,
"According to the most recent available data..." And if you know of major changes
in your neighborhood that would affect the data in a particular direction, we
recommend that you note these changes and the direction in which the data have
changed ... but only in general terms. For example, you might write:
"According to the U.S. Census 2000 (the most recent available data), 14.2% of housing units in the Irish Channel were vacant that year. However, notable neighborhood gentrification in recent years may mean that there has been a decrease in the number of vacant housing units in this neighborhood since the year 2000."And don’t forget to cite your source!