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

Nicole, Returned mail has been such an issue in our office that we have spent the past two years doing a statistical study of our returned mail. If you would like to email me offline, I would be happy to explain the policy and procedure that has come about due to our research which found that well over 50% of returned mail pieces from standard mailings (not first class) was actually deliverable. Karen Sorry - I forgot to give you my email. [Email Removed] Karen Roop Director of Advancement Services NGCSU Foundation Dahlonega, GA 30533 706-864-1545 [i]--- Edited at 10/3/2006 10:57:39 AM by Karen Roop[/i]

Here's my little horror story: This summer was the first time we've utilized AddressFinder - forced to due to the change in the interface in Raiser's Edge. I previously could use the NCOA Update tool in RE to create a file to send to Lorton Data for NCOA updating. With the same function in RE, I could bring in changes with address attributes, saving previous addresses, inserting start and end dates, etc. After installing an RE update in May, though, the functionality changed - I had to purchase an AddressFinder subscription to do the same easy export and import functions. Well, after getting all the data back and our addresses were updated, we did a mailing. Since then, we've gotten many more returns on the updated addresses than I've seen in the 2+ years I've been at this organization. The worst part was the large portion that were undeliverable "Insufficient Address" returns because the apartment or suite numbers were not provided in the updated records. I contacted BB support and though very friendly and sympathetic, they could only conclude that either the constituent had omitted the information or the USPS had omitted it. Frustrating!! I hope this doesn't happen next spring when I use our second AddressFinder service! Donor Database Coordinator [Email Removed] Oregon Food Bank Portland, Oregon ...Because no one should be hungry

Were you getting apartment numbers from the previous NCOA supplier? Does anyone know of a good way to track down apartment numbers other than calling the constituent, assuming you have a good phone number? Leslie Choitz Sisters of the Holy Cross Notre Dame, IN [Email Removed]

We generally do a good job of tracking the different types of returns and we never got this many marked Insufficient Address before (about 25% of the returned pieces)! The number of regular undeliverables is about the same. We really don't have an easy way to obtain the apartment numbers (suite numbers for businesses are a different matter - those can be found on the web pretty readily). I've got someone researching telephone numbers and we've started making calls . . . Donor Database Coordinator [Email Removed] Oregon Food Bank Portland, Oregon ...Because no one should be hungry

Why is the email notification system sending out old emails as if they were just posted.  This is not the first one I've gotten today and when will it stop?