In 2017, OES developed the Community Outreach Toolkit with the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Open Innovation Lab (COIL) team in an effort to summarize behavioral insights that could be employed to increase completion of the 2020 Decennial. These insights were organized around common reasons understood from customer research for not completing the census. This Toolkit is meant to support the extensive network of external partners’ Census communication and outreach efforts.

In the Toolkit, four common participation “barriers” are identified:

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To help overcome these barriers, the Toolkit then provides useful evidence-based insights, worksheets, and printable materials for approaches to make Census communications as effective as possible. Some of these tips include:

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We hope the Community Outreach Toolkit can provide tangible tips and guidance for anyone working to ensure an accurate count in 2020! To learn more about the 2020 Census, please visit 2020census.gov.

Read the full toolkit here.