Nonprofits are finding creative ways to adapt to their census outreach due to the coronavirus pandemic. The in-person engagement has now shifted to a more online-based approach filled with texting and phone-banking campaigns and supplemental webinars and coaching calls. 

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.”

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