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By Emily Glazer 

Fair Count was partway through a 60-county bus tour across Georgia to urge participation in the U.S. Census when the coronavirus outbreak prompted the nonpartisan civic-engagement group to hit the brakes.

Even though the nonprofit's in-person events were suspended, its leaders still wanted to reach Georgia's African-American population because they are often undercounted. A week later, the nonprofit hosted a Facebook Live chat aimed at black women to explain how the census affects the state's representation in Congress and funding for education, infrastructure and emergency-disaster relief.

"The census doesn't allow for a do-over, you don't get a rain delay and you don't get a pandemic delay," said former Georgia Rep. Stacey Abrams, a co-founder of Fair Count who used Zoom to connect from her home. "Our communities tend to be left behind when our resources are at stake."

The roundtable reached about 200 people in real time and thousands more through replays, Fair Count says. It is one of a number of virtual efforts by advocacy groups, states and the Census to encourage participation by millions of Americans who are traditionally hard to count because they lack fixed addresses, such as the homeless, or are difficult to interview, such as people who don't speak the same language as census workers.

The groups are using a mix of virtual events, digital advertising, text messages and phone banks, among other efforts.

The 2020 census, which is required by law to take an accurate count of the population and apportion congressional seats, will be the first in which most Americans are asked to respond online. April 1 is the official Census Day, but it launched in mid-March, with mailings urging nearly 150 million households to participate. Results are also used to distribute at least $675 billion a year in government funding.

Given the coronavirus pandemic, the Census postponed its in-person promotional activities until mid-April and extended the count two weeks until mid-August.

"We planned to have a lot of census week activities, get-togethers at parades, churches, in schools to hear what the census is, why that is important and to respond," Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner said. "All of that has now changed."

Mr. Buckner said the Census works with more than 340,000 groups, ranging from large companies to community organizations. Some of the groups are hosting virtual town halls, using loudspeakers to share information in public or teaming up with celebrities to post information online. The Census shares information on digital channels and worked with firms including Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google to highlight information about the survey.

Nick Chedli Carter, chair of the Census Digital Organizing Advisory Group, which advises nonprofits and other groups, said it held calls and participated in webinars on ways to connect virtually amid coronavirus-related restrictions.

"Undoubtedly the 2020 census is negatively impacted by what's happening right now," Mr. Carter said. "Organizations are trying to make sense of a very desperate situation."

Naleo Educational Fund, a nonpartisan group that works to raise Latino civic participation, held a webinar last week on changes to its outreach efforts. As of late March, it found l ess than 20% of people in about a dozen areas that are predominantly Latino had responded to the census so far, chief executive Arturo Vargas said during the virtual session.

As coronavirus spread, Naleo rewrote scripts for radio spots, changed digital advertising and posted new content on Instagram and Twitter, using the phrase "Chill and Fill," a play on the meme " Netflix and Chill."

It is also training about 20 staff to be so-called microinfluencers by using Facebook Live, Instagram Live and Zoom town halls to share information about the census with their communities, said Lizette Escobedo, Naleo's director of national census program.

"Folks are kind of building the plane as they try to fly it in these times," she said. "Now that we weren't going to have events, now that we weren't going to have the opportunity to reach our communities in person, we had to figure out: How are we going to get the most bang for our buck?"

Some states already had multimillion-dollar budgets for digital efforts. California directed millions toward digital efforts targeting 15 populations that have historically been undercounted, including Native Americans, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders and Middle-Eastern North Africans.

Given coronavirus-related changes, it shifted other resources toward virtual phone banks and webinars, a spokeswoman said.

Efforts are also under way in Texas, through community-based and philanthropic organizations.

The Paso del Norte Complete Count Committee, a consortium of government and community organizations in El Paso, is asking participants to post video messages online after they take the census. It is also using mobile application data, through data firm VoteMAP, to target digital ads to Spanish-speaking cellphone users, consultant Kimberly Taylor said.

"El Paso County will need federal resources to recover from Covid-19 aftermath," the committee said in a recent press release. "And since those resources are allocated based on the census count, an accurate count is essential."

Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 31, 2020 15:02 ET (19:02 GMT)

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