The Census was the largest, but not the only commitment of Sloan funds to "big science" in that decade; from information on its website https://www.sloan.org, the Foundation also provided US $11.5 million to the Barcode of Life project, an initial grant of $2.5 million to the Encyclopedia of Life, and $18 million to the ethics of Synthetic Biology. Funding to the Census may be eventually surpassed by that to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (US $60 million to 2017, refer The Sloan Foundation's 25-year partnership with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey), however that program has existed over a considerably longer period (1992-current).
The Census was the largest, but not the only commitment of Sloan funds to "big science" in that decade; from information on its website https://www.sloan.org, the Foundation also provided US $11.5 million to the Barcode of Life project, an initial grant of $2.5 million to the Encyclopedia of Life, and $18 million to the ethics of Synthetic Biology. Funding to the Census may be eventually surpassed by that to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (US $60 million to 2017, refer The Sloan Foundation's 25-year partnership with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey), however that program has existed over a considerably longer period (1992-current).