Do Your Part in Census 2010

Homepage archive, published 3/31/10

A boy participating at a recent Census rally. (Photo courtesy of Steven Wong)

April 1 is Census Day — the deadline for people to mail back their census forms and a key date to evaluate our progress in the census count.  As of March 31, 46 percent of Los Angeles County residents returned their census forms, slightly lower than the 50 percent national average. We all have more work to do to ensure an accurate count. Fortunately, it isn't too late to raise our numbers and guarantee that our communities get the resources they need.

For every 1 percent increase in the mail response rate, the nation saves $85 million in follow-up costs. That is why it is so critical that community leaders spread the word on the need to mail in the forms as soon as possible. Census bureaus, nonprofits and community groups will crunch the numbers and target outreach to those areas with the lowest response rates. In May, census workers will begin knocking on the doors of those who have not returned a census form.

“Census outreach is far from over and we should all keep spreading the message that everyone should be counted,” said Virginia Mosqueda, director of civic engagement at the foundation. “CCF and our census partners are moving into a new phase of outreach based on real-time data to improve response rates.”

In Los Angeles County alone, 4.4 million people live in “hard-to-count” areas, more than 2.5 times the number of any other county in the nation. Hard-to-count areas are made up of ethnically diverse, low-income and homeless residents — populations that CCF's partnering grantees will target in their outreach. That's why CCF has made census outreach a priority and invested $1.5 million to help ensure that L.A. County gets an accurate count.

Find out how your community is doing in the census – map it here.

Explore nationwide census response rates on the national census map.

Find out how you can get involved.