Every year, like many peers at other foundations, I partner with grantmaking teams to draft learning plans, using public data to inform our goals, underscoring the need to preserve public data systems. We revisit assumptions, reflect on lessons, identify questions for the year ahead, and map out data sources — like PRAMS and ACS — that will help us answer these questions and keep a pulse on, say, maternal and child health trends, housing stability, community well-being — some of the ultimate goals we hope to impact through our grantmaking.

In the last few months, I have been going through this routine of updating learning plans and simultaneously watching dramatic changes to the availability and reliability of public datasets and supporting systems. Datasets, especially those related to gender, race, and equity disappeared or were altered with little explanation or public process. Experts in federal data collection agencies were let go. Budgets for data were shrunk. Advisory boards providing unbiased oversight were dissolved. Research not aligned with the current White House policy priorities was rescinded. Wait — data collected consistently since 1980, like PRAMS, could suddenly stop, be rescinded, or altered in 2025?

Public data are foundational to philanthropic work. Funders use public data to gain insights into problems, identify disparities, and design and test solutions. Our partners rely on data for everything from advocacy and policy design to program evaluation, to determining cost-of-living adjustments, eligibility thresholds, and funding levels. When data disappear, are altered, or delayed, it becomes harder to answer basic questions that underpin effective grantmaking: What works? For whom? Where do inequities persist? The lack of data put communities that are most vulnerable and at risk of exclusion in further jeopardy.

In the face of this threat, what do we do to preserve public data systems?

The sector’s relatively quiet response is understandable. We have been focused on the immediate effects of recent government policies on the communities we work with, while many federal datasets are published every few years, so impacts of the changes to data systems are not being felt right away. Only when it’s time to evaluate strategy or plan for the next few years — asking what’s improved, for whom, where inequities remain — may we find that we are missing essential data on poverty rates, maternal and infant health markers, access to safe and affordable housing, exposure to environmental risks, and civic engagement rates, among other topics.

Read the full article about preserving public data systems by Karuna Sridharan Chibber at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.