Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

Funded by an unprecedented $24.7 million of state funding, the California Complete Count Campaign developed and implemented an innovative grassroots census outreach program. This statewide program created strategic partnerships with counties, schools, state agencies and community and faith based organizations. The result was a Mail Back Response Rate of 70% for California, which exceeded the national response rate of 67%.

This report describes the strategies from the 2000 Census efforts, captures lessons learned, measurements of success, and provides recommendations for future decennial census efforts. In addition to detailed maps of the mail response rates for both counties and census tracts, it provides a comparison to the 1990 census. Best practices from the 2000 Census are shared, including county Complete Count Committees (pages 28-29), CBO outreach by target groups (pages 38-43), and engaging schools (page 48).