The 2020 Census has begun! Once every ten years, the US Census takes a count of every resident living in the United States no matter their age, race, sex, or place of birth. The NC Complete Count Commission in partnership with the State Library of North Carolina created the NC Census Outreach & Engagement Toolkit to provide a collection of digital tools and resources to help facilitate census awareness opportunities.
Collaboration with individuals, groups, advocates and organizations that serve young children is a priority for the Census Bureau because in the 2010 Census, ten percent of children under the age of five were not counted. This was the most significant undercount in the Census, resulting in states losing over half a billion dollars a year. When children are undercounted in the census — especially ones at high risk of being missed, such as children of color, children in linguistically isolated households, and children living in complex housing situations — it limits access to resources that states can provide, such as housing, jobs, equitable education and healthcare.
Some of the materials provided by the NC Census Outreach & Engagement Toolkit for dissemination include:
- Developing support materials that include messaging on the importance of counting young children.
- Branding visuals that can be added within emails, newsletters, flyers, mailings, etc.
- Social Media Sample Posts and Drop-Ins
- Outreach tools to engage diverse communities and advertising aimed at households with young children.
Data from the 2020 Census will:
- Determine the size of North Carolina’s representation in Congress.
- Determine how federal programs will distribute more than $600 billion in funding to states.
- Support critical infrastructure and planning for roads, housing and schools, as well as other economic and social programs and services. For early learning, federal funding supports the Child Care Development and Block Grant (CCDBG), Early Head Start and Head Start, just to name a few.
- Act as a starting point for the state demographer’s annual population estimates, which the state uses to determine tax revenues with local governments.
Census notices are already being mailed out to North Carolinians. For the first time ever, there are three options for completing the Census: (1) online, (2) by phone, or (3) by mail. The online and phone options will be available in 13 languages, while the paper form — which will be sent later on to households that have not responded online or by phone — will only be available in English and Spanish. Please note that by law, 2020 Census will never be shared with other government agencies — all information collected in the nine question survey is private.