NYC Census 2020 Announces Next Census Subway Series competition

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New York —NYC Census 2020 announced the second contestants in the “NYC Census Subway Series”, an initiative that seeks to mobilize New Yorkers to self-respond to the census immediately.

The various accelerated drives to get people to fill census forms is a result of the shortened time frame available after the deadline was advanced by a month to Sept. 30, 2020 instead of October end.

NYC Census Director Julie Menin and Executive Assistant Corporation Counsel, NYC Law Department released the following statement Aug. 27, 2020:

“For the second week of our Census Subway Series, we’re declaring a showdown between Midwood, Brooklyn and the Upper East Side, Manhattan, for a week, starting next Monday, August 31. We’re tapping into one of NYC’s inexhaustible resources, neighborhood pride, to get out the count. The census is a nationwide competition, and we need a complete count to get our fair share of the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding our communities rely on, and the representation we deserve in government.”

The Census Subway Series is a five-week challenge in which two neighborhoods from different boroughs compete against each other to see which neighborhood posts the largest gains in its self-response rate over the week.

The first two neighborhoods to compete were Jamaica, Queens (current self-response rate: 50.9%), and Canarsie, Brooklyn (current self-response rate: 48.7%). The victor of the first match will be declared on August 31, a press release from the NYC Census 2020 office said.

Midwood, Brooklyn (current self-response rate: 54.7%) and the Upper East Side, Manhattan (current self-response rate: 49.6%) will compete for bragging rights from Monday, August 31 to Sunday, September 6.

In addition to bragging rights, residents of the competing neighborhoods — as well as any New Yorker who completes the census during the next five weeks — may be eligible to win prizes from Seamless, Lyft, and MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) as part of the new NYC Counts census contest.

Any New Yorker who completes the census between Monday, August 17 and Monday, September 21 can enter the contest to win one or more of the following prizes:

• $1,000 gift card from Seamless (six total)
• A $50 Lyft credit voucher and annual CitiBike membership (100 total)
• An annual membership to The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 (a $200 value; 25 total)

All New Yorkers must take a photo of their census completion confirmation page and upload it to the City’s website to enter. Complete rules can be found at nyc.gov/censuscontest.

As of August 25, New York City’s self-response rate is 57.1%, and the nation’s is 64.6%.

NYC Census 2020 is a first-of-its-kind organizing initiative established by Mayor de Blasio in January 2019 to ensure a complete and accurate count of all New Yorkers in the 2020 Census. The $40 million program is built on four pillars: (1) a $19 million community-based awards program, The New York City Complete Count Fund, empowering 157 community-based organizations, including several Indian-American organizations, to engage historically undercounted communities around the 2020 Census; (2) an in-house “Get Out the Count” field campaign supported by the smart use of cutting-edge data and organizing technology, and a volunteer organizing program to promote a complete count in each of the city’s 245 neighborhoods; (3) an innovative, multilingual, tailored messaging and marketing campaign, including a $3 million commitment to investing in community and ethnic media to reach every New York City community; as well as (4) an in-depth Agency and Partnerships engagement plan that seeks to leverage the power of the City’s 350,000-strong workforce and the city’s major institutions, including libraries, hospitals, faith-based communities, cultural institutions, higher educational institutions, and more, to communicate with New Yorkers about the critical importance of census participation.