One campaign, many tables

Local to national

My census work spans every level of scale: hands-on local tools like Map My CBO and the Census Atlas, built city-by-city for Orange County; the $3.7M regional campaign below, coordinating seven Bay Area counties; informal statewide coordination, sharing data and strategy with counterpart regions across California during that campaign; and national coalition-building through facilitating webinars, feedback sessions, and communications strategy for organizations across the country preparing for the next census cycle.

One campaign, many tables

As Senior Director of United Way Bay Area's $3.7M "Bay Area Counts 2020" initiative, I held the coordinating role at the center of a Get-Out-the-Count initiative bringing together 7 county governments, 18+ philanthropic funders, and 150+ government, nonprofit, labor, and business organizations around a single coordinated campaign during a pandemic, a devastating wildfire season, and a national reckoning on race, through a timeline that kept changing under us.

My work involved building consensus on a shared slogan, design, and outreach strategy; aligning the region's funders and counties around one reporting process; and keeping 150 grantees and their ecosystem partners moving together as the ground kept shifting.

The result: 6 of our 7 counties ranked in the top 10 of California's 58 counties for final self-response rate — more than 6 percentage points above the state's rate.

Bringing corporate partners into the count

Among the 150+ organizations in our network were companies with real ties to the communities we were reaching. We partnered with corporate CSR teams to mobilize their employees for phone banking, secured corporate foundation grants to extend our reach, and worked with company staff to build outreach kits for our community-based partners. Funding and hands-on engagement each carried value, and together they helped us reach more households. It's the same principle behind our approach to corporate social impact work today: designing roles for employees and resources for community organizations that fit the actual need.

Translating the national picture for people on the ground

National guidance on the census changed fast and often. I distilled what was coming down from the Census Bureau and the State of California into plain, actionable updates for our partner network — delivered through monthly coordination calls and a mailing list of 800+ contacts — so organizations doing the actual door-knocking and phone-banking always knew what had changed and what it meant going forward.

Real-time data, rapid-response grants

We tracked self-response rates in real time, census tract by census tract, and used that data to move money. We issued rapid-response grants to the populations and geographies falling behind, in real time, rather than waiting for the next scheduled funding round. It's the same instinct behind Ecosystem Field Guide: the right resources, matched to the right place, at the moment the data says they're needed.

Closing the loop between policy, tools, and the field

The State of California built the canvassing tool our partners used for in-field outreach. As canvassers started using it, I collected their on-the-ground feedback — what was slowing them down, what they needed that wasn't there — and brought it back to the State. The State incorporated that feedback into real improvements to the tool. From there, we built canvasser guides and training videos to help partners across multiple regions get the most out of it in the field.

Reaching every community, in its own language

Our primary campaign materials went out in 18 languages, meeting the state's language-access requirements. Across our full grantee network, outreach happened in 68+ languages total, with local partner organizations reviewing materials for cultural fit — not just translation accuracy.

Two tools, one body of work

The same real-time response data that shaped our rapid-response grants later became the foundation for the Census Atlas — a public reference guide that turns self-response-rate data into clear maps, charts, and city-by-city analysis, piloted first for Orange County's 34 cities. Where Ecosystem Field Guide is a living directory for coordinating outreach today, Census Atlas looks backward — it's the reference guide I wish I'd had on day one of planning a complete count campaign.