TV Network and Advocacy Groups Support Complete Census Count

This story is part of an occasional series to showcase the work communities, governments, organizations and businesses are doing to help the U.S. Census Bureau count every one in 2020.

On a scorching day in early August, about 30 people gathered at the Univision Network’s flagship TV station in Los Angeles from across California to talk about the challenges of making sure everyone is counted in the 2020 Census.

The Census Bureau has long been planning the most robust marketing and outreach effort in Census history for the 2020 census, including hiring 1,500 partnership specialists and spending millions on marketing and advertising for the 2020 Census.

This event was just a small piece of that massive effort, a collaboration between Univision and two Census Bureau programs — the Census Open Innovation Lab (COIL) and the National Partnership Program.

The two programs are collaborating where opportunities intersect, particularly as they continue to engage organizations to become national partners during the 2020 Census in order to ensure a fair and accurate census.

At the L.A. event, there were representatives from major advocacy groups, from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials to the League of United Latin American Citizens, along with representatives from Univision affiliates in California.

After opening remarks by Ditas Katague, former Census Bureau National Advisory Committee chair and director of Census 2020 California Complete Count, meeting participants divided into teams to focus on four challenges and propose solutions for: 

• Amplifying outreach and engagement in rural communities.
• Educating immigrant families with limited English language proficiency.
• Creating effective digital communications campaigns.
• Addressing the undercount of children 0 to 5 years old. 

“Univision is engaged and involved in census outreach as a part of its corporate, social responsibility community empowerment,” said Ronald Estrada, senior vice president of corporate and social responsibility and community empowerment at Univision.

“We understand the vast importance of this upcoming census in 2020,” he said, and it’s crucial “that all our community participate and are counted.”

Why is it important?

 “Because of, really, the impact it provides, the resources it provides, targeted directly to our core areas of education health, hospitals, clinics,” Estrada said.

Colin Maclay, University of Southern California professor and executive director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, also attended, facilitating one of the breakout sessions during the meeting. Last year, Maclay helped organize some of the first Census Solutions Workshops in California, bringing together leading technologists, philanthropists and civil rights organizations.

"The Univision meeting was another in this series of conversations in the spirit of the first session we hosted over a year ago," Maclay said. "It brought together a remarkable group of people with the capacity to make a difference in the count in Los Angeles County and the nation."

COIL employs prize competitions, crowdsourcing, product development sprints, open data collaborations and more. The goal is to address key challenges, such as getting out the count for the 2020 Census and making federal open data more accessible, useful and meaningful to the public.

One COIL initiative, Census Accelerate, encourages innovation.

“Census Accelerate is a new initiative in which teams of diverse problem solvers outside of government collaborate across sectors to generate innovative solutions to specific challenges for the 2020 Census,” said Mara Abrams, COIL managing director. “Creative agencies and digital strategists will work with hard-to-count populations, advocates and subject matter experts to create innovative digital content that's created both for and with the very communities they're reaching.”

Raul E. Cisneros is director of national partnerships at the U.S. Census Bureau.