Records of the NYC Census 2020 organizing initiative
Description
The digital records in this accession are primarily from NYC Census 2020 planning and executing outreach and engagement efforts. According to their final report, NYC Census 2020 was the first City initiative of its kind; it combined a "Get Out the Count" field campaign, a multi-lingual messaging/marketing campaign, coordination with other agencies to promote the Census across all City institutions, and the New York City Complete Count Fund grant program. The Complete Count Fund was a new grant program that NYC Census 2020 operated in partnership with The City University of New York (CUNY) to improve Census response rates in historically under-counted communities, specifically among immigrants, public housing residents, young children, people of color, and low-income households. The grant program worked with community-based organizations that were already trusted in those communities to fund localized outreach and engagement. The files in this accession document various aspects of all of these initiatives and, over time, show how these initiatives changed shape in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and challenges to the 2020 Census created by the Trump presidential administration. The majority of this accession is made up of files that were originally stored and/or created in Google's G Suite software environment. This includes outreach/marketing materials (including final copies as well as planning documents), materials for trainings/workshops, materials from partnerships with community-based organizations (agreements, correspondence, etc.), documents related to assisting CUNY with planning and administering the Complete Count Fund, demographic data and mapping data, and calendars. There is also correspondence, namely two email inboxes (mbox files) from staff members Benjamin Parisi and Barbara Williams and some transcripts of messages or group chats in Google's messaging services. The physical records in this accession are mostly outreach and promotional ephemera. This includes face coverings, "I Count" placards in various languages, postcards for absentee responses, and posters. Other materials include presentations of background information on the NYC Census 2020 project from Julie Menin and materials for the Intra-agency Convening to kick-off the program in January 2020. There is also a binder of Complete Count Fund applications, a small amount of financial records, and sub-contracting agreements for Complete Count grant awardees.
Extent
2 cubic feet : physical ephemera (cloth face masks, posters, and placards), a binder of applications, and other paper records.
0.252 terabytes (compressed transfer extent: 0.206tb. uncompressed extent: approximately 0.252tb.) : born-digital files, about 173,000 files. the majority of files (at least 155,000) are in common file formats that include microsoft suite formats (including .docx, .xlsx, etc.), image and moving image formats (including .png, .jpg, .heic, .mov, .mp4, etc.), and widely readable data/code formats (including .json, .html, .csv, .hpp, .rds, etc). the remaining files are either in less common formats, formats that require highly proprietary software to access (in particular: adobe products, arcgis, or autocad), unformatted raw data, and system or software files (primarily fonts and temporary files).
Dates
bulk circa 2019-2021
Record Groups
Names
External Documents
Creator
- Parisi, Ben (Benjamin) (Person)
- NYC Census 2020 (Organization)
- Williams, Barbara (Person)
Access to Unprocessed Archival Collections
Unprocessed collections may include protected information related to personal privacy, health information, and minors, as well as attorney-client privilege. In accordance with laws and regulations, this material will be reviewed prior to providing public access and certain records may be subject to redaction or other measures that restrict access. Archival and library collections may also be restricted or limited based on physical condition, technical requirements, or format.