By Emily Glazer
Fair Count was partway through a 60-county bus tour across
Georgia to urge participation in the U.S. Census when the
coronavirus outbreak prompted the nonpartisan civic-engagement
group to hit the brakes.
Even though the nonprofit's in-person events were suspended, its
leaders still wanted to reach Georgia's African-American population
because they are often undercounted. A week later, the nonprofit
hosted a Facebook Live chat aimed at black women to explain how the
census affects the state's representation in Congress and funding
for education, infrastructure and emergency-disaster relief.
"The census doesn't allow for a do-over, you don't get a rain
delay and you don't get a pandemic delay," said former Georgia Rep.
Stacey Abrams, a co-founder of Fair Count who used Zoom to connect
from her home. "Our communities tend to be left behind when our
resources are at stake."
The roundtable reached about 200 people in real time and
thousands more through replays, Fair Count says. It is one of a
number of virtual efforts by advocacy groups, states and the Census
to encourage participation by millions of Americans who are
traditionally hard to count because they lack fixed addresses, such
as the homeless, or are difficult to interview, such as people who
don't speak the same language as census workers.
The groups are using a mix of virtual events, digital
advertising, text messages and phone banks, among other
efforts.
The 2020 census, which is required by law to take an accurate
count of the population and apportion congressional seats, will be
the first in which most Americans are asked to respond online.
April 1 is the official Census Day, but it launched in mid-March,
with mailings urging nearly 150 million households to participate.
Results are also used to distribute at least $675 billion a year in
government funding.
Given the coronavirus pandemic, the Census postponed its
in-person promotional activities until mid-April and extended the
count two weeks until mid-August.
"We planned to have a lot of census week activities,
get-togethers at parades, churches, in schools to hear what the
census is, why that is important and to respond," Census Bureau
spokesman Stephen Buckner said. "All of that has now changed."
Mr. Buckner said the Census works with more than 340,000 groups,
ranging from large companies to community organizations. Some of
the groups are hosting virtual town halls, using loudspeakers to
share information in public or teaming up with celebrities to post
information online. The Census shares information on digital
channels and worked with firms including Facebook Inc. and Alphabet
Inc.'s Google to highlight information about the survey.
Nick Chedli Carter, chair of the Census Digital Organizing
Advisory Group, which advises nonprofits and other groups, said it
held calls and participated in webinars on ways to connect
virtually amid coronavirus-related restrictions.
"Undoubtedly the 2020 census is negatively impacted by what's
happening right now," Mr. Carter said. "Organizations are trying to
make sense of a very desperate situation."
Naleo Educational Fund, a nonpartisan group that works to raise
Latino civic participation, held a webinar last week on changes to
its outreach efforts. As of late March, it found l ess than 20% of
people in about a dozen areas that are predominantly Latino had
responded to the census so far, chief executive Arturo Vargas said
during the virtual session.
As coronavirus spread, Naleo rewrote scripts for radio spots,
changed digital advertising and posted new content on Instagram and
Twitter, using the phrase "Chill and Fill," a play on the meme "
Netflix and Chill."
It is also training about 20 staff to be so-called
microinfluencers by using Facebook Live, Instagram Live and Zoom
town halls to share information about the census with their
communities, said Lizette Escobedo, Naleo's director of national
census program.
"Folks are kind of building the plane as they try to fly it in
these times," she said. "Now that we weren't going to have events,
now that we weren't going to have the opportunity to reach our
communities in person, we had to figure out: How are we going to
get the most bang for our buck?"
Some states already had multimillion-dollar budgets for digital
efforts. California directed millions toward digital efforts
targeting 15 populations that have historically been undercounted,
including Native Americans, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders
and Middle-Eastern North Africans.
Given coronavirus-related changes, it shifted other resources
toward virtual phone banks and webinars, a spokeswoman said.
Efforts are also under way in Texas, through community-based and
philanthropic organizations.
The Paso del Norte Complete Count Committee, a consortium of
government and community organizations in El Paso, is asking
participants to post video messages online after they take the
census. It is also using mobile application data, through data firm
VoteMAP, to target digital ads to Spanish-speaking cellphone users,
consultant Kimberly Taylor said.
"El Paso County will need federal resources to recover from
Covid-19 aftermath," the committee said in a recent press release.
"And since those resources are allocated based on the census count,
an accurate count is essential."
Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 31, 2020 15:02 ET (19:02 GMT)
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