Hi all!

I got caught completely off guard with the new USPS regulations on all bulk and pre-sort mailings.  In case you don't know, before you can send out a bulk or pre-sort mailing, your mailing must be ran through a NCOA check.  We use a mailing service that prepares our major mailings for us.  They run the NCOA check and give us back the updated addresses on hard copies.  

I am curious what "methods" are you using for tracking when a particular address has been ran through NCOA (if any).  From what I understand, addresses must be checked every 95 days.  We do frequent mailings and our lists change constantly. 

Maybe I am overthinking it, and should just run the NCOA each and every time I do a mailing. 

Thanks for your input.

Joanie

We do 4 Newsletter mailings a year through a mailhouse that nicely sends back only the changed addresses.  My database must be in good shape because there are seldom that many changes so I just make them manually.  Our other solicitations go through someone else and they are not quite so accommodating. This (due to drop on Tuesday) will be my first time using another new house and am waiting to see what happens.

 However, we recently had sent back a bunch of addresses that the USPS website and software indicate that they can not be bulk mailed at that address (DPV is no).  The USPS does not recognize the address as correct but they show no other listing or changes.  Even NCOA does notchange these. Unfortunately the addresses are correct and will have to be mailed first class each time. Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks for your replies. 

Nina, since you are manually entering the changes, do you make a note some where in RE that this new address change is a result of an NCOA verification?  I was thinking about adding an attribute for that. 

We have never had a policy for tracking old addresses, just have always pretty much just replaced the old address with the new without making any notes about it. 

Of the 1800 newsletters we just sent out, I got back about 56.  Most of them are alums, so that's pretty good. 

I don't know what Blackbaud charges for the service, but the local company only charged me about $30 to run 1800 names.  I have used Blackbaud's email finder and wasn't real happy with it.  Either I was walked through the import incorrectly, or it is set up to change a constituent's email address to their spouses address.  I had to go back and fix a bunch of changes it made that I knew wasn't correct.  For $600 annually, I wasn't thrilled with it.

"Nina, since you are manually entering the changes, do you make a note some where in RE that this new address change is a result of an NCOA verification?  I was thinking about adding an attribute for that"

We make a "Note" on a record for every address change, and on the address by filling in the "Info source".: NCOA being one of many sources.   We just had a call from and Alum who noticed that I was mailing to an incorrect address.  We had on the record that I had changed the address because of the different address on their check. The alum had not noticed that her checks were incorrect and she had been using them for about 6 months. Just one example of why It pays to keep detailed records.  I won't be surprised if their Annual Fund gift is a bit larger this year.

Our previous DB manager tried making and Attribute for NCOA.  I didn't like it.  We have Alums who move a  lot and giving them a new attribute each time we received a new address cluttered up attributes.  I spotted one alum who after 5 years had 14 address change attributes.  It just seemed less messy in Notes and also on the address record. 

Wow, good advice! 

I just start tracking alums two years ago, so I'm a newbie when it comes to that.  The previous employees of this office had no clue as to database maintenance and I am still trying to get their garbage cleaned up!

Thanks!!!!

I failed to mention in my previous posts here that we keep all old addresses as previous addresses by by performing the function Cindy is talking about.  Having old addresses has been a help in finding "Lost" alumni.