Litterati for Cleanup Organizers

The following contains information to help guide and support cleanup organizers who are interested in using Litterati, a mobile app that tracks litter collection, to help keep our rivers clean and engage volunteers.

We recommend visiting About Litterati webpage to learn more and gain a better understanding of the app and its capabilities as a user before setting up your challenge and using the communications toolkit.

Litterati Benefits for Organizers

  • Achieve your cleanup and volunteer goals in a safe and proactive way.
  • Engage an unlimited number of volunteers and educate them on the importance of keeping trash out of their local river virtually or as a part of an in-person group cleanup.
  • Easily track and monitor your impact.
  • Capture quantifiable data results (ex. types and brands of litter, materials and objects).
  • Create motivation and friendly competition among volunteers.

Some examples of using Litterati to support cleanup efforts include:

  • Incorporate Litterati into an existing group cleanup event. Create a one-day challenge and ask your volunteers to record their litter at your cleanup event;
  • Create a challenge that last several days or weeks and invite your volunteers to participate any time during the challenge period; or
  • Create a challenge for a special milestone, volunteer day or Earth Month to celebrate and engage your volunteers and community.

Check out Litterati’s impact stories for additional examples.

Connected Challenges

Litterati’s ‘Challenges’ feature can be used to inspire your community and volunteers to clean up our rivers and streams. You can identify the most active participants, reward them, and see where your community has been cleaning up.

BENEFITS
We encourage cleanup organizers to create a challenge and connect it to American Rivers’ National River Cleanup Challenge. Benefits to connecting your challenge to National River Cleanup:

Process
1. Register your cleanup with American Rivers.
During registration, you will provide information about your connected challenge.

If you need American Rivers to create a challenge for you, you will be asked to provide additional information about your challenge during registration. American Rivers will notify the organizer that the challenge is created within one business day.

2. Create a Connected Challenge.
We recommend you create the “Connected Challenge” yourself. To create a challenge:
1. Open the Litterati app and select “Create Your Own Account” to create challenges in the app and track your challenge’s activity and visualize your impact on the Litterati Dashboard (see example here).
2. On the top ribbon in the app, click “Challenges.”
3. Scroll to the section “Your Challenges” and click the black button “Create a Challenge.”
4. Select “Connect to a Featured Challenge.”
5. In the search bar, select “National River Cleanup Challenge.” If you do not see it, use the search bar to type in “National River Cleanup Challenge.”
6. Select “Connect” and then follow the steps to “Customize your Challenge.”

Once your challenge is created, American Rivers will follow up with additional information including a communications toolkit to help you onboard volunteers, encourage them along the way and thank them at the end of your challenge.

3. Invite Volunteers to Participate in Your Challenge.

Make sure your volunteers sign up in advance so you know who is participating and can communicate with them about the challenge. Volunteers can sign up with you or on your event webpage on American Rivers website. We will notify you if any new volunteers sign up along with their contact information. 

Additional Information

  • Any litter collected outside of this radius will not contribute to these challenges.
  • As a challenge creator, you can use the random code provided or create a custom code after you create your challenge. Share this code (example: Cleanup2020) with your community so they can easily find and join your challenge in Litterati by copying/pasting your code into the app.
  • Difference between private and public: Private challenges require a code to join and are just for those that you provide the code to. It will not show up publicly. Public challenges are open to anyone in the Litterati community to join.

How-to Videos