By Max Cacas
FederalNewsRadio

One year from now, the Census Bureau expects to be on-the-air, in print, and online with a message for all: please fill out your census forms!
It is all part of the effort to make sure everyone is counted in the 2010 Census.

The House Census Subcommittee, chaired by Missouri Democrat William Lacy Clay, met yesterday to explore how the Census Bureau was planning on using the media to get the word out on the decennial population count, particularly to those people considered “hard to count”.

How will the communications plan decrease the undercount, and increase the mail response rate of the hard to count communities?

For the answers, Clay turned to Thomas Mesenbourg, acting Director of the Census Bureau, who explained that the plan is to expand on a program, successful in the 2000 census, to reach ethnic minorities, those in lower income communities, and others that past censuses have found difficult to count accurately.

Messenbourg said they were devoting $250 million from $1 billion in stimulus money for outreach that will include stepped-up canvassing of addresses to identify residences with multiple dwellers and homes now abandoned due to mortgage foreclosures.

The money will also be used to boost the bureau’s advertising budget by $80 million, of which $26 million would target the fast-growing Asian and Hispanic populations using television, radio and online spots. Another $10 million would be spent on the undercounted black community.

The Census Bureau is getting help in honing and focusing its communications campaign to hard-to-count communities from DraftFCB, a communications firm. Executive vice president Tim Karakajian outlined their most recent step: a cross-country research and fact-finding tour, in which they tested draft versions of commercials with more than 1,400 people in all 40 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, to make sure their message is effective with target audiences.

Karakajian also says a final report is due to Census Officials next month, with production of the first census commercials and ads set to begin this summer.
Of recent concern to Census officials: word that the current economic downturn and the resultant home forclosures, and disruption to households, could adversely affect the 2010 Census.
Messenburg says they hope to determine which homes recently abandoned to foreclosure are really vacant in the upcoming address canvas phase of the census.
The Census communications program also depends on the work of so-called “partnership” organizations, mainly local groups and some non-profits, who understand the local communities, particularly those in the hard to count populations.

Robert Goldenkoff, director of strategic issues at the GAO, said many businesses that donated significant resources in 2000 for promotion may have less money to donate, while schools enlisted to promote the census may be financially burdened without additional investments.

With production of the first census ads set to begin this summer, officials say that they will know how successful their media efforts have been once they know how many households returned their mail-in-census forms in the first phase of the 2010 Census.

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