I think we all want our mail to get opened by our constituents. And the outer envelope is important in that regard, as is what's inside the envelope. However, as good stewards of our donor's money, we feel we need to be concerned about USPS regulations and what we can do to cut the costs of mailings. We feel complying with USPS regulations and being concerned with what makes the post office "happy", makes our mail more deliverable, more quickly delivered, and thereby becomes very important. We used NCOA through Blackbaud for the first time about a month ago, which returns addresses in the proper USPS format (which includes the USPS abbreviations). We also use the Blackbaud Address Validation software, which assigns our zip+4 and other postal codes (such as CARRT, LOT, etc.), and standardizes our addresses (again using the USPS abbreviations). Having worked in a direct mail house before coming into a nonprofit, I wouldn't do it any other way than with USPS abbreviations. I don't really think that abbreviations make a mail piece look less professional. Dyana Welch United Church Homes, Inc. Marion, OH [Email Removed]

It is never about whether or not the abbreviations make the piece look less professional but rather whether or not it looks less PERSONAL. Who in their right mint would hand type a letter and envelope to a major donor and have it include an abbreviation like Rdg for Ridge? You wouldn't. Who would type a letter to someone and Type in Rd with no period after it? You wouldn't. For some mailings you want the donor to feel like this was a personal letter typed especially for them. Therefore in order to use RE tools like quick letters we keep the punctuation in the address and if we need to strip it on export we have the flexibility to do that. We also use only commonly used abbreviations like St. and Ave. Not Rdg and Trl. We keep the full version of these words. When we are doing bulk mailings I allow my mailhouse to CASS certify the addresses to be most economical and work with USPS regs. When we send our data through NCOA they also CASS certify it prior to running it through so I am not worried about matching with their database. When I get CASS certified addresses back I go through them and follow the same above principles to change them back to a more Personal format. Melissa S. Graves Manager, Development Database & Direct Mail Planned Parenthood of Connecticut [Email Removed] 203-752-2804 P.S. Still looking for more people to meet with while at the October Conf. There are now over 20 of us getting together! Email me if interested.

Out of curiousity Melissa, do you or your mail house print and affix the labels to the envelopes (or print the address on the labels, whatever)? With our mailhouse, we print everything (including the address on the envelopes) and they simply stuff and mail them. Also, do you have to manually change Rdg and Trl back to Ridge and Trail, or is it possible to add "things to ignore" to the validation? We have campus names UAA, UAF, and UAS in some of our addresses, and it changes them to Uaa, Uaf, Uas, which is a little annoying. Thanks, Doug Doug Creek University of Alaska Database Administrator [Email Removed]

Our mailhouse does all of the mail merging and printing. After NCOA I run a query of all addresses changed and export them to excel to run find and replace on abbreviations I do not like and to add punctuation back in and them import them back in. It takes maybe an additional 30-45 minutes (once you get the system down) but we do NCOA only 2x a year so it is not so bad. Melissa S. Graves Manager, Development Database & Direct Mail Planned Parenthood of Connecticut [Email Removed] 203-752-2804 P.S. Still looking for more people to meet with while at the October Conf. There are now over 20 of us getting together! Email me if interested.

Jim, We would also like a copy of your guidelines. Thanks!!

I totally agree with you Jim! And I would appreciate a copy of your policies regarding address entry [Email Removed]). I also wholeheartedly agree with the responder who said it's not whether your mailpiece looks professional but whether or not it looks personal. At home if I get an envelope and it's got so many abbreviations in it only the post office could figure out where it should go...it's the last thing that gets read...if it makes it past the wastebasket at all. If I am not important enough for someone to take the time to key two extra letters and spell road...I don't consider their correspondence very important either. I am working on cleaning up my third messy database and the number of ways people can abbreviate is amazing! My rule...spell it out and spell it right. As an example at staff meeting once I asked five people to abbreviate several commonly used words appearing in addresses other than road and drive. It didn't take long for them to understand why I didn't want abbreviations used in our database. There were only two words on the list of ten for which they had listed different abbreviations. If I am searching for a particular address I don't want to waste time trying to figure out how many different ways the words could have been abbreviated. Evelyn Cox CARTI Foundation Systems Analyst

Jim, Here is me with egg on my face. If I had read a little farther in the Users Edge I would have found your policy! Thanks for sharing. Evelyn Cox CARTI Foundation Systems Analyst

JIm, I would like a copy of your written address rules. After using NCOA updates I stopped using punctuation and spelled out Saint Louis and tried to have everything match the NCOA updates. I don't think it looks as good though. I think I may add the punctuation in my mail merge. Jo Kiefer SSM Hospice and Hme Care Foundation [Email Removed] 314.989.2775

Jim, I would like a copy of your written address rules. We have been pretty consistant, but there is always room for improvement. And I thank you in advance for the information.

They are on the Blackbaud website. http://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/client/marrowaddrabbrproc.pdf  Denise Stengl School Sisters of St. Francis Milwaukee, WI [Email Removed]

Thank you Denise, I was too quick to ask. I found them further down in the Users'Edge. Kathy FamilyMeans [Email Removed]

I tried to submit a reply and it disappeared before I was done. Hopefully it won't show up!! My comments were that since I came to Youthville over 2 years ago I have implemented the PO's preferred abbreviations at my church where I am also the part-time secretary and in my personal correspondence. Let me tell you why!!! 1) Before I came to Youthville my family owned the grocery store in our town. The post office is a block away from our store and a block away from the florist. Unfortunately, the florist was never open when I worked so I had to mail a check to them for flowers ordered for a funeral. THREE TIMES the post office could not get our check to the florist. I don't know if it was lost, if someone was stealing her mail -- whatever the case I had to write duplicates three different times. 2) We have a BRM envelope here at Youthville. There is another organization here in Newton, The Mennonite Mission Network, that also has a BRM envelope. They look nothing alike. But REPEATEDLY, we get the MMN envelopes delivered to us and our BRM account is charged. At first, they wanted me to actually drive down to the PO to bring the mail to them before we would receive credit. Finally, it has happened so many times that I just have to call and drop the envelope back in the outgoing mail. 4) I am also my church treasurer and a few years ago my natural gas bill was overdue because they never received my June payment. An entire year later I got a letter from the natural gas company with my June check it it. Seems an entire bag of gas payments was found a year later. What in the world caused an entire bag of mail not be delivered. 3) Postage rates continue to rise while service seems to diminish. My personal feeling is that whatever I can do to make it as easy as possible for the PO to deliver my mail I am going to do it. I don't think it is the address on the envelope making a person open that mail -- it is the return address. If they are your donors it doesn't matter what the address looks like they are going to open the mail. We receive lots of gifts in honor or in memory of individuals. We have a really nice note card that has a sketch drawing on the cover drawn by a former member of our board of directors. I hand-write the acknowledgement to the family or honoree and I hand-address the envelope (causing us to pay the first class postage of .37 of course). Some people give to Youthville in memory of their friend because we happen to be the donor's favorite charity -- not because the family of the deceased made us their memorial. So even though this note card is not your standard mail and it is hand addressed, I often wonder how many people throw it in the trash without opening it because of the return address (which is printed). Sorry to write a book. I just know that I don't throw mail away at my house based on how it is addressed. I look at who it is from and whether or not I care to open something from them!! Laurie Cox United Methodist Youthville Newton, KS

This has been an amazing discussion - very interesting to hear the various opinions etc on addressing. My question for those who prefer long form - Do you ever have a problem with truncation, or your addresses just being plain cut off during mail processing? Some addresses contain so much info - such as building name, floor, street address, that along with a contact and business name it's difficult sometimes not to shorten things. Thanks, AM

Hi Jim: Would you send me a copy of your address guidelines. [Email Removed]

Hi Jim, I too would like to review a copy of your policies. Would you send them to me at [Email Removed]? Thank you!