The Democracy Funders Census Subgroup supported two texting campaigns: a pilot in three states and a broader campaign in 17 states, called the Census Outreach Expansion (COE) project. There are two reports, written by the lead project person, Sandi Fox of Smart As A Fox LLC, that review the projects along with a slide deck summarizing the two efforts.

COE was established to increase grassroots organizations’ peer-to-peer texting outreach efforts and capacity building in the current COVID-19 environment. This project allowed Census Counts partners and grantees to expand their ability to reach hard-to-count audiences in 17 states. By using an open-source P2P texting platform and combining resources for list acquisition, COE removed the middleman and brought down costs to a wholesale level. It also centralized texting efforts to streamline outreach efficiently and prevented a duplication of efforts and unneeded excess costs. Many of the state and national grassroots groups were already looking at expensive peer-to-peer platforms and mobile list buying since in-person field organizing was no longer an option with the pandemic. COE helped groups to join forces to reach the maximum number of hard-to-count targets for 2020 Census outreach.