Census outreach efforts hampered by coronavirus pandemic
When members of the Orange County Herald Center saw their face-to-face census outreach campaigns screech to a halt with the coronavirus pandemic and statewide lock-downs, they got creative.
The Christian nonprofit, which largely engages the Chinese community, quickly shifted gears by getting their youth, most of whom are home because of school closures, engaged in a texting campaign, said Sarah Middleton, census consultant with Charitable Ventures in Costa Mesa, which partners with several nonprofits in the area including the Herald Center.
“That is such a brilliant idea at a time when conditions are not ideal,” she said. “I see this kind of creativity from our partners every day when it comes to pulling all stops to figure out how to reach hard-to-reach communities.”
The COVID-19 curve ball
April 1 is Census Day, a key landmark for the 2020 Census. By this time, every home in California and the United States should have received an invitation to participate in the census count. People can fill out their census information online, by phone or by mail, telling the U.S. Census Bureau where they live as of April 1, 2020.
But COVID-19 has thrown a curve ball to Southern California organizations, which have been ramping up grassroots efforts over the past 18 months to maximize census participation in their respective communities by hiring additional staff members and workers to canvass door to door. Now, census workers and these local nonprofits are pivoting, scrambling instead to use phone banks, texting and online tools to fill gaps in outreach efforts.
D’Andre Lampkin, co-chair of Ontario’s complete count committee, had big plans for getting undercounted communities to participate in Census 2020. After handing out hundreds of fliers at a kickoff in January at Ontario’s Town Square Park, he trained volunteers to go door to door, partnered with the city to open libraries, community and fitness centers and started open houses twice a week where anyone could walk in — no questions asked — and fill out their census data online using the foundation’s computers.
But COVID-19 stay-at-home orders have thrown a wrench into all his plans, said Lampkin, who is using his own nonprofit, the D’Andre Lampkin Foundation, to boost counting in this Inland Empire city of 176,000 people, of which 70% are Latino.
Shifting gears and grassroots efforts
Some organizations are making changes while keeping the message flowing.
At the Inland Empire Community Foundation, census canvassing groups have shifted to phone banking, said Deborah Phares, census coordinator at IECF, a nonprofit based in Riverside.
“It is getting to the same outcome: Getting folks informed about census, asking them to make sure to fill out the census,” she said during a web media call on March 19.
Instead of in-person, volunteer training is done through webinars or “coaching phone calls,” she said. Sometimes she’ll send her team a quiz to fill out. “Folks are getting really creative on how to do this work,” she said.
Many organizations have shifted their focus to COVID-19 and are asking those they call about their health and any food insecurities.
Lampkin’s group last week handed out 244 brown-bag meals to seniors. On each bag a flier in English and Spanish was attached urging recipients to fill out their census forms, which had already reached home mailboxes. Many who are food-insecure may be undocumented or live with individuals who are undocumented. Others are parents with children who no longer get free lunches because schools have shut down.
These sub-groups are suffering the most during the stay-at-home orders and are also considered most likely not to be counted by the census, Lampkin said.
“Though this tragedy, we have been able to find a way to reach people we may not have been able to reach,” he said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Los Angeles chapter (CAIR-LA) had hired staff to reach Muslim Americans in Southern California, particularly on April 3, which the organization has designated as Muslim Census Day, said spokesman Eugene Fields. But with COVID-19 quarantines and shutdowns, they will resort to coordinated Facebook ad campaigns, Twitter chats with experts and one- to two-minute Facebook informercials in three languages — English, Farsi and Arabic.
Trying to get the messaging just right at a time when people may have lost their jobs, and may be struggling emotionally or physically, has been challenging, Fields said.
“There are people who are sick or caring for family members who are sick,” he said. “You definitely want to be sensitive to that when you’re asking people to fill out a census questionnaire.”
Crucial time for the census
As the nation faces an unprecedented public health crisis, local groups are also trying to show communities how the census can make a big difference when it comes to investments in community health and federal relief, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, director of the UC Riverside’s Center for Social Innovation and director of the Inland Empire Census Complete Count Committee.
“For us to be prepared not only for future public health crises but also the current one, we need to have good, reliable, accurate information in terms of where our population lives and what their needs are,” he said. “Any survey the government, business, university or nonprofit organization does depends on the census. It’s the only true population count we have.”
Census Day is “not a deadline, but simply a snapshot in time” that makes everyone focus on responding to the questionnaire, if they haven’t done so already, said Ditas Katague, director of the California Complete Count Committee, an advisory panel of community leaders who represent diverse populations from across the state.
The Census Bureau announced earlier this month that the questionnaire deadline has been extended from July 31 to Aug. 14 because of COVID-19 complications.
California households so far have a 35.7% response rate, which is close to the national rate of 36.2%. Orange County is the only Southern California county that has a higher response rate than the national average at 39.2%.
Katague said those with post office boxes or those who live in rural areas, including several in eastern San Bernardino County, may not have received the mail-in invitations yet. But, she said, anyone can go online and use his or her address to fill out the questionnaire or call 844-330-2020.
“It’s important,” she said. “We want to get the power, money and data that is necessary to benefit our communities.”
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