QUICK, WHICH HAS a better public image: the Boy Scouts of America or the U.S. Postal Service?
The BSA may be counting on its greater popularity in some quarters to win a postage dispute with the USPS. Just in case that doesn’t work, it has also turned to the courts.
In a suit filed in April at U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the BSA claims it was charged an extra $218,000 in postage because the USPS decided such items as mugs and key chains were not sufficiently close to the BSA’s educational purposes.
The financial impact could be even greater. The USPS determined during the review process that the BSA’s catalogs from the two previous years also did not meet those standards. It demanded more than $485,000 in additional postage, bringing the difference for those three years’ worth of mailings to over $700,000.
According to a spokesperson for the BSA, an appeal for the 1997 and 1998 mailings has been filed with the postal service.
When the USPS turned down the appeal for the 1999 catalog, the BSA filed suit. The catalog is distributed annually to 4.5 million members, including Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Explorers, Scout Masters and adult volunteers.
The use of the BSA’s fleur-de-lis emblem on such products as mugs and pens seemed to be the focus of the USPS’ objections.
It argued in a Jan. 7 letter to BSA attorneys that “the reproduction of a BSA emblem on an item that is primarily utilitarian would not necessarily make that item substantially related to the organization’s primary authorization.”
The USPS maintains that while uniforms, merit badges and the like do relate to the BSA’s mission, mugs or chairs with the BSA logo do not. The items are not specific to scouting and are used primarily for non-scouting purposes.
However, the BSA contends that its logo use is no different from that of museums and other nonprofits that sell by catalog. How does the USPS answer that? By arguing that museum logos are related to museums’ educational programs.
Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers in Washington, DC, feels the Scouts have a better chance at winning in court than the USPS might believe.
“The courts have overturned a lot of these cases,” he says. “The enforcement is uneven and some interpretation inaccurate.”
Denton explains that postal inspectors have been very aggressive about preferred-rate mailers over the past three or four years. There have been well over 1,000 cases each year, including one against the Girl Scouts.
“The [USPS] has no qualms about revenue protection,” Denton says.
