Iowa State and the city of Ames embarked on a high-profile campaign to get ISU students to complete and turn in their census forms early.

Apparently, the campaign worked.

Ames was first in the nation in finishing its census campaign, and it wasn’t the only city with early returns — the Kansas City Regional Census Center completed its first part of Census 2000, the Non-Response Follow-Up (NRFU) phase, two weeks earlier than the planned July 7 deadline.

Clare Bills, city public relations officer, said the promotion of Claim Ames 2000 assisted in getting residents to turn in their forms early.

“We finished the campaign in April — the earliest in the nation,” Bills said. “ISU was instrumental in coordinating the census.”

Kathleen MacKay, former ISU dean of students, said the Claim Ames campaign successfully reached ISU students.

“Awareness was our first stage,” she said.

“The second stage was handing out information to the students through tables and the like.”

MacKay said the university promoted the census by mailing information to greek houses and ISU dormitories. Information was also passed out at student-group meetings.

More than 36,000 census workers contacted more than 3.1 million households in the six-state Kansas City region.

A higher-than-expected mail-in return rate, 69 percent, reduced the number of households that enumerators had to visit.

The Coverage Improvement Follow-Up (CIFU) is the next operation to be undertaken by Census 2000 to improve the coverage of housing units and people. In CIFU, enumerators will follow up, for example, on units classified as vacant or deleted in prior census operations.

The census, the largest peacetime federal government operation, is mandated by the U.S. Constitution to be conducted every 10 years.

It is used to reapportion the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.