On Thursday, September 15, Social Comapct is packing up its office and moving to a new location. We’re not going far, Just up the road a bit; our new address will be:  218 D Street, S.E. 2nd Floor, Washington, DC 20003

Social Compact’s phone number will stay the same, and we anticipate a minimal disruption in our work.

Social Compact, Inc., a national non-profit organization, has created the Social Compact Investment Fund (SCIF) to support the development of supermarket-anchored retail projects in underserved marketplaces.  These investments will bring new grocery stores into markets that the traditional, national supermarket and grocery store chains have long overlooked. The stores supported by SCIF investments will offer high-quality general merchandise, seasonal goods and everyday consumables at very competitive prices, in addition to USDA-inspected beef, pork and poultry, farm-fresh fruits and vegetables.

April is almost here. It is a month for pouring rain, playing pranks, painting eggs, and paying taxes. But since this is a year ending in zero that means it’s also time for one more thing, filling out your Census.

It costs no money and takes a trifling amount of time, but it helps to determine how well represented your community is in government, how over $400 billion in federal funding gets divided, and how big of a market your community represents to businesses and organizations looking to expand.

Social Compact has assisted cities with programs to correct and challenge undercounts of their populations by conventional metrics. Last year alone Social Compact assisted twelve cities in challenging their Census population estimates and found almost 224,000 people who had been left uncounted. That’s at least $2 million in misallocated federal funding due simply to bad data.

Over the years we have found that one of the hardest things about community based economic development is simply a lack of good, reliable information. Because of a lack of response to the Census and other surveys, low-income neighborhoods in America seem smaller, poorer, and less dynamic than they really are and we will have to live with the consequences for a decade. Consequentially these neighborhoods will not get the services they need as banks will not realize there are people in need of financial services and grocers and shops will not know how many customers they are missing.

Making sure you and your neighbors have all submitted their Census form is a small, but incredibly important step. If the Census has not delivered a form to your mailbox, you can call 1-866-872-6868 to request one. You can also visit the Census’ website to request a form in a variety of languages from Albanian to Yiddish. Finally, any additional questions can be cleared up with a visit to any local Questionnaire Participation Center in your neighborhood.

Social Compact announced today the launch of its Washington, DC-based ‘CityDNA,’ a new easy-to-use web-based system that will serve as a one-stop-shop for visualizing and analyzing local market data. CityDNA aims to help local governments, investors and community groups understand and respond to the unique market characteristics of their communities.

View the full press release.