Stormwater Partners Social Marketing Campaign - Close the Dumpster Lid City of Washougal

The City of Washougal, in collaboration with Stormwater Partners of SW Washington, is soliciting proposals from interested and qualified firms to pilot, implement and evaluate a social marketing behavior change campaign in five cities (Battle Ground, Camas, Ridgefield, Vancouver and Washougal) and unincorporated Clark County. The purpose of the campaign is to reduce stormwater pollution by influencing the behavior of closing dumpster lids when not in active use at commercial businesses to keep water out.

The project involves:

• Reviewing the existing social marketing plan and dumpster outreach toolkit and proposing minor updates and revisions as needed for regional pilot implementation.
• Developing an evaluation plan for the campaign and pilot.
• Piloting the social marketing campaign strategies with a limited number of commercial businesses (30-50) across the participating jurisdictions throughout Clark County in 2025.
• Refining strategies based on pilot findings.
• Implementing the campaign broadly (approximately 400-500 businesses) in 2026 and 2027 based on approved recommendations from the pilot campaign including conducting in-person business outreach and distributing toolkit resources in-person.
• Collecting and analyzing evaluation data from the pilot and full implementation phases.
• Providing technical assistance to jurisdictions as needed.

The final deliverables will include:

• Updates to existing social marketing plan, including evaluation plan and pilot plan.
• Marketing materials will include appropriate branding for this region and may include any proposed modification(s) from the consultant to the existing materials to make the program more successful.
• Summary report of pilot implementation.
• Final campaign evaluation report and data summaries.
• Campaign toolkit with locally adapted materials.
• Outreach and contact tracking documentation.
• Recommendations for future implementation.

In 2024, Stormwater Partners developed a social marketing campaign plan that includes several potential intervention strategies. Many of the strategies were inspired by a campaign toolkit that was originally developed and implemented by several other jurisdictions in Washington State collaborating on a dumpster outreach workgroup . The toolkit includes communication resources, graphics and other campaign materials that may be adapted. This toolkit, and the existing plan will serve as the foundation for the Stormwater Partner’s campaign.

A firm is now being sought to 1) utilize existing plan and toolkit, and make any minor revisions to toolkit materials to develop a pilot campaign to test strategies in 2025, 2) finalize a campaign and evaluation plan informed by the pilot and 3) implement and evaluate the campaign from 2026-2027. To implement the campaign strategies, the firm will conduct in-person outreach to priority businesses in each of the region (cities of Battle Ground, Camas, Ridgefield, Vancouver, Washougal and urban areas of unincorporated Clark County).

The selected firm will make minor revisions to customize existing toolkit resources , likely focused on updating the signs and stickers for regional use, procure materials needed to implement campaign strategies, pilot the program to a select number of sites, make identified revisions to the toolkit resources based on the pilot program, implement the campaign more broadly by distributing toolkit resources to businesses in-person and evaluating for desired behavior change. The selected firm will produce a final report that evaluates the campaign's effect on the desired behavior change - closing dumpster lids when not in active use.

While the group remains open to guidance on site selection (including quantity), we have created lists of potential sites for each jurisdiction. The priority focus will be Commercial Businesses with dumpsters or trash cans. Further site prioritization includes locations where dumpsters are shared by multiple businesses, such as plazas. The smaller cities have identified approximately 50 businesses each, while Vancouver has approximately 150 business locations and Clark County has approximately 70 shared-dumpster sites identified in the urban areas of the county. All the sites are commercial, however there is currently a proposed mix of commercial business types for each jurisdiction. The total list will be approximately 400-500 businesses with many clustered together on shared properties.