Make them count you! how are reaching illinois' har
by Suzanne Hanney
The State of Illinois is spending $29 million on U.S. census outreach and education - more per capita than any state in the U.S. - because getting more people to answer the government’s questions is worth billions of dollars in federal money and up to two representatives in Congress. “One of the tag lines we’ve been using is ‘Make them count you.’ Completing the census is an act of resistance to not being heard,” said Regan Sonnabend, vice president of marketing and communications and census director at the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago. The YWCA is a “Regional Intermediary” (RI) in the state’s hub-and-spoke plan to blanket Illinois with “trusted messengers,” or community groups that will help their populations understand and complete the census, which is online for the first time. The YWCA received $1 million of the $8.9 million state money allocated to the Chicago region and has subcontracted with All Chicago Making Homelessness History, Howard Brown Health Center, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Center on Halsted, Equality Illinois, Women’s Justice Institute, LaCasa Norte, SGA Youth & Family Services, the LGBT Chamber, Affinity Community Services, Chicago Black Gay Men’s Caucus and the South Asian American Policy & Research Institute (SAAPRI), to reach the homeless and LGBTQ communities. These efforts began months ago, so the shutdowns due to the COVID-19 outbreak have caused “a small speed bump we’re confident we’re able to overcome,” Sonnabend said March 16 after an Illinois Department of Human Services webinar with Regional Intermediaries. Although April 1 is still census day, people have until the end of June to self-respond, so the hope is that subcontractors can reschedule face-to-face assistance days in a few weeks to complete the 2020 census – the first to be done online. “We’re kind of replacing in-person efforts for the next few weeks with digital and direct mail,” she added. “This does not need to be that much of a roadblock to the census since people can complete it over the phone and the internet.” Direct mail is not to be underestimated, she said. Most of the YWCA’s subcontractors have significant mailing lists and people will be at home, where they can get this information by snail mail, phones (which often have internet access) and social media. Because schools are shifting to e-learning, Comcast is offering its Internet Essentials program free to new low-income users for the next two months amid the outbreak instead of the regular $9.95 monthly fee. The program is offered free to families of students who receive free or reduced lunches (www.internetessentials.com) and census efforts are an unintended beneficiary, Sonnabend said.
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“One thing we’ve really embraced is that completing the census is not just a civic duty, it’s a civil right,” Sonnabend said. “You have the right to be counted and to be included for congressional representation.” Besides federal money for schools, school lunches, roads, Pell grants and more, census data also influences how private dollars are spent. Perhaps a food store wants to open on the South Side but is deterred because of low population numbers – the result of an undercount, she said. “That data will stay there for the next 10 years” - until the 2030 census. Poverty and lack of English language proficiency are two factors that typically make people “hard to count,” and many more people simply don’t understand the importance of the census, Sonnabend said. Moreover, across the board, community groups are working to overcome mistrust in government.
