XVIII. Communications and Partnership Infrastructure

The Operational Plan treats Communications, Partnerships, and Engagement as part of the machinery of enumeration. Its purpose is not simply to advertise the census. The operation is expected to increase self-response, support workforce recruitment, help residents understand privacy and confidentiality, and connect Census with communities that are difficult to reach through ordinary government communications.

That role may be especially important in 2030. The census is becoming more technically complex while questions about government data use, immigration enforcement, cybersecurity, language access, and questionnaire content may make some residents more hesitant to participate. A sophisticated response system will not produce a complete count if people do not trust or understand it.

A. Communities Named in the Plan

The Operational Plan contains a broad discussion of people who may be hard to count. It identifies populations with limited English proficiency, people with low incomes, people who do not live in traditional housing, people with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, undocumented immigrants, and young children. Its discussion of historically undercounted populations also identifies Black and Hispanic populations, American Indians and Alaska Natives living on reservations, renters, and several other groups with documented coverage problems.

The Communications, Partnerships, and Engagement section is narrower. When describing partnerships specifically intended to reach hard-to-count populations, it gives four examples: young children, people with disabilities, people with low literacy, and rural communities.

Those examples should not be interpreted as the complete 2030 partnership strategy. Census will need different partnerships for different barriers. An organization trusted by rural residents may not reach recent immigrants. A disability organization may understand accessibility barriers but not housing instability. Tribal governments require government-to-government relationships that cannot be replaced by ordinary community outreach.

The final partnership strategy should therefore identify the populations and barriers it intends to address much more systematically. At a minimum, it should account for communities affected by:

  • language barriers and immigration-related concerns;

  • homelessness, housing instability, and informal housing;

  • racial and ethnic undercounts;

  • disability and low literacy;

  • rural, remote, and tribal geography; and

  • group quarters and other nontraditional living situations.

The purpose of identifying these communities should not be to label people as inherently “hard to count.” Many census barriers are created by the design of the operation itself. A household becomes difficult to reach if Census does not support its language, does not recognize its housing unit, communicates through an unfamiliar technology, or approaches it through a messenger it does not trust.

Census should therefore connect its partnership strategy directly to the operational risks described throughout this guide. If testing finds that a particular population has difficulty with non-ID response, administrative-record matching, a new residence rule, or a multilingual service, the partnership program should have a mechanism for bringing that information back into the design.

Open question

Does the partnership strategy cover the full range of communities likely to experience 2030 Census barriers, and does Census have organizations with relevant expertise involved early enough to influence the design?

B. Declining Formal Stakeholder Engagement

The loss of Census’s formal advisory committees creates a significant gap in the 2030 planning process.

In 2024, Census established a dedicated 2030 Census Advisory Committee whose members represented stakeholder organizations, communities, and viewpoints from across the country. Its mandate included advising on historically undercounted populations, administrative data, partnerships, communications, public trust, data products, and other elements of the 2030 design. Census also relied on the National Advisory Committee for community perspectives and the Census Scientific Advisory Committee for methodological and scientific advice.

All three committees were terminated effective February 28, 2025. Census’s current advisory-committee webpage states simply that the Bureau has no advisory committees.

This does not mean Census has stopped talking with outside organizations. The Operational Plan still calls for national and local partnerships, the Bureau continues partner outreach for the 2026 Test, and the 2030 Stakeholder Engagement Strategy remains in place.

But informal engagement does not fully replace a standing advisory structure. Advisory committees created recurring public meetings where outside experts could see Census presentations, question assumptions, develop recommendations, and receive formal agency responses. They also brought different perspectives into the same conversation. A civil rights organization could hear from a statistician; a tribal representative could respond to an operational proposal; Census leadership had to address the resulting recommendations publicly.

Without those structures, engagement can become more fragmented and more dependent on which organizations Census chooses to consult. A series of individual meetings may provide useful information while giving the public little ability to know who was consulted, what concerns were raised, or how Census responded.

This matters particularly when major policies change quickly. The Commerce directives on language and disclosure avoidance, the reduced 2026 Test, and the increasing reliance on administrative data all create questions that would previously have been natural subjects for formal advisory committee review.

Census should replace at least some of the lost functions even if the committees themselves are not restored. Options include recurring public stakeholder forums, published technical roundtables, structured requests for recommendations, and written responses explaining how significant external concerns were addressed.

The Bureau should also publish a stakeholder-engagement calendar identifying the major design questions on which it expects outside input and when that input must arrive to influence the decision.

Credible risk

Census continues meeting with partners but loses the recurring, public, cross-community process through which outside experts could challenge assumptions and place recommendations formally before the Bureau.

Advocacy priority

Restore meaningful formal advisory mechanisms or create transparent substitutes that include public meetings with diverse representation, documented recommendations, and Census responses.

C. Communications Procurement

The 2020 Census relied on a large, integrated communications campaign that combined advertising, research, multicultural communications, partnerships, and outreach. Census awarded the principal Integrated Communications Contract in August 2016, more than three years before Census Day, and the contractor subsequently conducted extensive audience research and multilingual testing. The final public education and outreach campaign included approximately $500 million in paid communications.

The public procurement picture for 2030 is less clear.

As of August 2026, Census’s public page listing major 2030 procurements includes Census Questionnaire Assistance, application modernization, recruiting and training systems, field IT infrastructure, and fingerprinting and badging. It does not currently identify a dedicated communications, advertising, or partnership procurement.

That absence is worth monitoring, but it is not evidence that Census has decided against a major communications contract. The work could be acquired later, divided among several contracts, performed through a broader acquisition vehicle, or supported partly through existing Census capabilities. The public procurement page may also not list every acquisition that will ultimately support the census.

The timing nevertheless matters. A national communications campaign requires much more than purchasing advertising shortly before Census Day. Census must research changing attitudes and barriers, segment audiences, develop messages, test them across communities and languages, produce materials, purchase media, prepare responses to misinformation, and coordinate communications with community partners.

The Operational Plan itself says Census will use research and analytics to develop and adjust messages and will continue identifying new communications strategies over the next several years.

Census should therefore clarify:

  • whether it expects a dedicated integrated communications procurement;

  • what acquisition vehicle will be used;

  • when research and creative development will begin;

  • how multicultural and multilingual expertise will be incorporated; and

  • what communications capability must be ready for the 2028 Dress Rehearsal.

Advocates should monitor the public acquisition schedule and SAM.gov rather than assuming that the absence of a listing today establishes the final approach. But if a major procurement remains unidentified as 2027 approaches, the amount of time available for research, testing, and community-specific campaign development will become an increasingly important concern.

Issue to monitor

The current public 2030 procurement schedule does not identify a dedicated communications or advertising procurement. Census should clarify its acquisition strategy early enough to permit substantial audience research, multilingual testing, and partner involvement before production.

D. Community Partnership Capacity

The Census Bureau’s partnership strategy assumes that community organizations will help translate a national census into locally credible information. The Operational Plan describes partnerships with governments, community and faith-based organizations, philanthropies, schools, media, businesses, social-service organizations, and groups representing specific populations.

The scale of this infrastructure was enormous in 2020. Census reported more than 300,000 partner organizations and more than 10,000 state, local, and tribal Complete Count Committees by February 2020; the partner network later exceeded 370,000 organizations.

Census should not assume that this infrastructure will simply reappear in 2030. Organizations change leadership, lose staff, alter priorities, or disappear. Relationships maintained on a list are not necessarily active partnerships capable of mounting a major outreach campaign.

Several forms of capacity will matter.

Funding

Community outreach requires resources. Organizations may need staff time, translation, printing, events, transportation, digital advertising, technology, or grants to smaller partner organizations.

Census generally relies on organizations, governments, and philanthropies to bring their own resources to these activities rather than providing grant funding to community partners. The 2030 strategy should therefore assess whether outside funding ecosystems are developing early enough, particularly in communities where local governments and nonprofits have limited capacity.

Philanthropy can play an important role, but private funding should supplement rather than compensate for an inadequate federal communications and partnership operation.

Staff

Successful partnership work requires people who understand both Census procedures and the communities they serve. Census needs its own partnership staff early enough to build relationships rather than arriving shortly before enumeration with materials to distribute.

Community organizations likewise need staff who have time to participate. Census should minimize administrative burden, provide clear points of contact, and avoid repeatedly asking partners for input without explaining how that input affected the design.

Trusted Messengers

A partner logo on a Census flyer does not automatically create trust. The most useful messengers are people and institutions with existing relationships in the community.

Census should identify trusted-messenger gaps geographically and by population rather than simply counting the total number of partner organizations. Ten organizations reaching the same population do not compensate for having no credible partner in another community.

The 2030 research program has already recommended expanding a community-based “trusted messenger ecosystem” and using analytics to strengthen partnerships in historically undercounted communities. That work should be translated into measurable operational goals.

Accurate and Timely Materials

Partners need authoritative information they can actually use. That includes translated materials, clear explanations of confidentiality, fraud-verification instructions, response options, residence rules, and answers to emerging concerns.

Materials must also arrive early enough to be adapted into local communications. A community organization should not have to invent its own explanation of a major policy change because Census has not yet produced one.

Consistency will be particularly important if Census changes language services, questionnaire content, disclosure avoidance, or administrative-data practices. Partners cannot maintain trust if they are given talking points that become obsolete shortly afterward.

Motivation to Participate

Census should not assume that every organization that supported the 2020 Census will automatically promote the 2030 count with the same enthusiasm.

Community partners put their own credibility at stake when they encourage people to respond. They need to believe they can answer residents’ questions honestly and that participation remains valuable to the communities they serve.

This becomes much harder when Census or Commerce adopts policies that make participation more difficult, make communities less visible in the resulting data, or undermine confidence that responding is safe. A group serving people with limited English proficiency may be reluctant to act as a trusted messenger if official language services are sharply reduced. Civil rights organizations may find outreach harder if important race and ethnicity data are removed or heavily coarsened.

The stakes are higher still if government actions create a credible fear that census information, census-derived data, or the infrastructure built to collect them could be used for immigration enforcement or other actions that harm the people being asked to respond. Even where Census can point to strong legal confidentiality protections, trusted organizations cannot simply tell communities to disregard those concerns. They are putting their own credibility at risk when they assure residents that participation is safe.

Census should therefore treat partner trust as something that must be earned and maintained, not assumed. When policies affecting confidentiality, data use, language access, questionnaire content, or data products change, Census should explain those changes directly, address credible concerns about harmful uses of information, and give partner organizations enough evidence to decide what they can responsibly tell their communities.

Census does not have to agree with every partner’s policy position. But it should recognize that partnership capacity depends partly on credibility. When consequential policies change, Census should engage affected organizations directly, explain what has changed, and give them accurate information they can use with their communities.

Central question

Will the organizations Census expects to rely on in 2030 have the resources, staff, information, relationships, and confidence needed to serve as trusted messengers?

E. Worst-Case Scenario

By 2030, distrust of government has increased and several elements of the census are harder for community organizations to explain. Multilingual services have been narrowed, some questionnaire or data-product decisions are controversial, and residents receive more warnings about government impersonation and digital fraud.

Census therefore needs trusted community organizations more than it did in 2020.

But the partnership infrastructure develops later and at a smaller scale. The formal advisory committees that once brought community representatives into the planning process are gone. Partnership staff establish relationships closer to peak operations, while community organizations have less staff and funding available for census work.

A major communications campaign also starts late. Research and multilingual testing are compressed, leaving less time to identify changing concerns or develop messages with communities rather than for them.

Census produces national materials explaining that participation is safe and important, but local organizations encounter questions those materials do not answer. Some develop their own guidance. Others are unwilling to reassure residents about policies they do not fully understand or support.

The strongest organizations and best-resourced states build effective campaigns anyway. Communities with weaker nonprofit and governmental infrastructure receive less outreach precisely where Census needs external help the most.

The result is an uneven partnership system. Census can point to thousands of participating organizations and a national communications campaign, but the places facing the greatest barriers have fewer trusted messengers and less capacity to adapt the campaign to local conditions.

Lower self-response then feeds directly into the other risks described in this guide: more field follow-up, more proxy responses, and greater reliance on administrative records.

Worst-case scenario

Census enters 2030 needing community trust more than ever but invests in the partnership and communications infrastructure later or less extensively than in 2020. At the same time, language, content, or data policies make participation more difficult for trusted organizations to promote.

Why advocates should care

Partnerships are not an optional public-relations layer placed on top of the census. For many historically undercounted communities, they are part of the infrastructure that makes direct participation possible.

Where to Look: See section 3.2.6, “Communications, Partnerships, and Engagement,” pp. 40–41, and section 2.2, “Hard to Count,” pp. 13–15, of the 2030 Census Operational Plan. Together they describe the planned communications campaign, partnership program, community engagement, and populations Census identifies as facing particular enumeration barriers.

The 2030 Census Stakeholder Engagement Strategy describes the broader plan for external engagement. The Census Advisory Committees webpage is important for tracking the loss or restoration of formal advisory structures; Census currently reports that it has no advisory committees.

Finally, monitor the 2030 Census Procurements page for a communications acquisition or other contracting vehicle supporting the campaign. For comparison, the 2020 Integrated Partnership and Communications materials document the earlier communications contract, partnership program, Complete Count Committees, and large-scale trusted-messenger network.

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