2020 Census Updates

The 2020 Census is less than eight months away! The Census Bureau has recently released a sample of the 2020 questionnaire; you can see it here.

Colorado’s State Demography Office has numerous resources on their website to help communities get ready for the census. These include fact sheets and FAQs; “Why Complete the Census?” talking points, news links, data tools, and more.

The Demography Office is also sponsoring two programs to assist with community outreach:

• The Census 2020 Outreach Grant Program is available to provide funding for community outreach, education, and promotion efforts related to the census, particularly focusing on “hard-to-count” populations. Eligible recipients include local governments, intergovernmental agencies, councils of government, housing authorities, school districts, nonprofit organizations, and the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes. Applications must be submitted by September 15.
• The Colorado 2020 Census Support Program “was created to support the outreach efforts of local governments and partner organizations by providing promotional materials to better reach hard-to-count populations and improve self-response rates to Census 2020.” Local governments and other eligible organizations may request funds up to $2,500 “to support or supplement existing outreach activities in hard-to-count communities.”

Librarians and researchers should be aware that in June 2019, the Census Bureau stopped releasing new data in American FactFinder. The site will continue to be available as an archive until June 2020 so that historical data can still be accessed. American FactFinder is being replaced by the Census Bureau’s new data platform, available at https://data.census.gov/cedsci/. The site is still in development, but all of the newly released data can be found there.

Additional information and resources are available on the State Demography Office’s Colorado Census 2020 homepage.