I know this has been discussed before but since it doesn't appear that we can get to old forum messages I'm bringing it up again. (And if I am wrong about retrieving old messages, please let me know.) We sent out 6000 names to Alumni Finder. They sent us back corrected addresses. We have sent out a large mailing and gotten back a bunch of returns. (More than usual.) Alumni Finder missed some name changes and the Post Office won't deliver the mail. Or the Post Office doesn't like a piece of the address and returns the mail to us. It's very frustrating. The person working with Alumni Finder is planning to talk to them about her issues with their part of the process, but what can we do about the Post Office? And what does everyone else do with the returns? Our general practice is to call 411 and track them down that way. And if no info can be found, mark them lost. Very time consuming. I should add we are a college and are interesed in tracking down alum. Right now we could keep 3 student workers busy for a month with the returns we have. Any ideas, what works for you, etc would be appreciated.

laura
Laura Caswell
Worcester State College
Information Technology
Worcester, MA 01602
[Email Removed]

Hi Laura,

I used to work at The Rivers School in Weston, MA and we had similar problems with lost alumni. I would check on whitepages.com to see if it had new addresses, but this only works if the alumni has an unusual last name. For a John Smith in Boston, MA, it doesn't work.

What I found most effective was e-mailing the lost alumni to get their current address. E-mails tend not to change, but mailing addresses do, and I found I received a decent response rate. I also would phone or e-mail classmates of the lost alumni to see if any of them kept up with the alumni.

As for the post office not liking addresses, you can do a zip code lookup on the post office web site (www.usps.com) and it will give you the way they like the address in the results. If no valid address comes up, then you know the post office won't accept it. They have an 800 number, so maybe try to call them to see how you can find out the proper format of the address. The post office is continually becoming more particular about how an address should look for it to be delivered.

I hope this helps and good luck on your lost alumni hunt! Beth Molnar
Database & Development Coordinator
Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Foundation
[Email Removed]

I usually try www.theultimates.com. You can search 6 different search engines from one website. Melissa S. Graves Databse Administrator Planned Parenthood of Connecticut [Email Removed] 203-752-2804