We used Blackbaud's AddressFinder service for the first time about a month and a half before we did a mail drop. From that drop, we've gotten HUNDREDS, of pieces returned to us with bad addresses, including many of those that were updated by the AddressFinder. At the rate they are being returned, I expect we will approach 1,000 pieces of wasted postage and paper. For the price we paid for this service, I really expected better data. Has anyone used this service and had similar results? Does anyone use a different NCOA service that is more accurate? Grrr. Nicole D. McMorrow Database Administrator Women's Foundation of California 340 Pine St., Ste. 302 San Francisco, CA 94104 www.womensfoundca.org [Email Removed]

How many pieces of mail did you drop and when was the last time you mailed to this group? Was this an incerase in returns from when you last mailed? Address finder can only look into 4 years of address changes and will never be perfectly up to date based on the number of times people in the US move. Those are limitations based on the US postal service NCOA database - nothing BB can do about it. If you have never mailed to some of these constituents or haven't mailed in more than 4 years (using addressing service) than this may be your problem. I have never had an increase in returns if I do address finder immediately prior to a drop. I have always seen a reduction. *** I can spell, I just can't type. Where is spell check? Melissa S. Graves Manager, Development Database & Direct Mail Planned Parenthood of Connecticut [Email Removed] 203-752-2804

Nicole, Two comments for you, here. First, if this is your first time to use any NCOA service, you may find that because they go back for 4 years, your constituents may have moved several times during that time span. If the address you sent is, say 432 1st St., and the aaddress you got back was 567 2nd St., they may have moved AGAIN since filling out the Change of Adress form for 432 1st St. Unfortunately, our society is very transient, and people do tend to move a lot more often than we would like for them to. This catching up process will take a little time, and is frustrating, but you will eventually get out of this cycle. My second comment is that yes, even though I've goten beyond that point, I still have a lot of mail returned from the new addresses. Here's the really discouraging piece of news that I have no answer for: approximately 30% of the mail returned by the post office as undeliverable is actually addressed properly and should have been delivered. We are switching to a different NCOA service, through our mailhouse because it is much less expensive, but I still expect to get large quantities of returned mail. It was particularly distressing in the last newsletter run to get 4 or 5 pieces returned with "new" addresses that were identical to the old one!! Good luck. Jo Jo Ward Neuhaus Education Center (713) 664-7676 ext. 233 [Email Removed]

Huh. Well, that's crappy. This mailing's returns was a huge increase over previous mailings, when we used a different NCOA service. And I do realize that people move a lot (sheesh, I live in San Francisco, where everyone plays musical apartments), and that it was a month and a half since the update, but I still didn't expect this much returned mail. I would be interested to know other NCOA vendors that people use... Nicole D. McMorrow Database Administrator Women's Foundation of California 340 Pine St., Ste. 302 San Francisco, CA 94104 www.womensfoundca.org [Email Removed]

I will probably not be able to use another vendor (unfortunately) because we keep old addresses for historical purposes. The interface between AddressFinder and RE is such that I can automaticlaly change the old address to previous, put in the end date and remove the send mail check while importing the new address. Have any of you using another NCOA service been able to import the address changes and be able to do all of that? Or are you not keeping old addresses? *** I can spell, I just can't type. Where is spell check? Melissa S. Graves Manager, Development Database & Direct Mail Planned Parenthood of Connecticut [Email Removed] 203-752-2804