The country has reached another important milestone in the 2020 Census. 62% of all of the households in the country have responded – that’s 91,600,000 responses! Here in Montgomery County we currently have a self-response rate of 72.1%. While we’re certainly making progress, our current response rate places us 5th in the state of Maryland. While this is generally good news, this means more than 1 in 4 households in Montgomery County have not responded to the Census which could mean the county could lose 4.6 billion dollars in federal and state funds over the next 10 years for hospitals, schools, and social services.
In this final stage of the 2020 Census campaign, we have begun to intensify our efforts to get as many of our remaining households counted as possible, especially within our historically underserved and undercounted communities. While everyone has until September 30 to complete their Census, August 11th is the date when residents across the county will start to receive phone calls and visits from Census Bureau representatives to collect information from those households who have not yet responded. Our goal is to provide residents with an opportunity to respond to the Census before this process begins.
How Volunteers Can Help:
We now know that unfortunately, some of those communities most affected by COVID-19 during this pandemic are also among the populations historically most undercounted in the Census. With this in mind, we are now recruiting volunteers to help us encourage Census participation at food distribution and other community events across the county. At these much-needed community events, where we will provide all necessary PPE’s and adhere to social distancing guidelines, we will encourage households to respond to the Census while they wait in line to receive boxes of food or other services.
If you’ve already taken our Census Ambassador training, please consider signing up to serve as a Census Captain at one of these opportunities.
Please click here to submit a Census Volunteer Application and to sign up to help us at an event during Census Weekend or beyond.
Once you’ve signed up to volunteer, please consider joining one of the Census 101 and Volunteer Orientation virtual sessions scheduled for next week. We will cover the basics of what everyone should know about the 2020 Census, the use of QR codes, and how we’d like you to support this effort while social distancing and remaining safe. If you’ve already taken the Census Ambassador Training you’re welcome to join this updated and abbreviated version of that orientation. Sign up here.
We will be asking volunteers to:
- Share census materials and swag,
- Encourage Census submission online using QR codes, and generally
- interact positively with vulnerable members of the community during this difficult moment in time.
Lastly, we are currently in the process of compiling an active list of food distribution events and opportunities for participation. We will update this list of outreach events regularly. We will be in touch with details about upcoming opportunities to help spread the word!
For more information about the 2020 Census, Please visit https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/census/