The U.S. Postal Service and two groups representing nonprofit mailers are butting heads over two pending bills to relax the cooperative mail rule.
Those bills — currently bottled up in committee — are HR-1169, sponsored by House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-IN) and S-1562, sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA). Both are seen as having little chance of passing this year.
While the Direct Marketing Association, a host of nonprofit groups and some commercial fundraisers support the bills as written, the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers and some of its members don’t.
Neal Denton, the Alliance’s executive director, is talking to the sponsors about tightening the bills to better protect nonprofits from unscrupulous commercial fundraisers.
But the postal service likes only the bill pending in the Senate. That version would shield the USPS from lawsuits over prior cases where a nonprofit was required to pay regular postage rates for a mailing prepared and mailed by a commercial fundraiser.
A nonprofit group can only mail its own materials at reduced postage rates. Any mailings prepared and sent by a commercial entity — including a professional hired fundraiser — must be mailed at regular commercial rates, according to the current rule.
The House and Senate bills would allow nonprofit organizations — such as charities, churches, colleges, universities, museums and political parties — to share ownership of their fundraising solicitations with commercial printers and mail houses. Plus, the bills would permit commercially prepared and mailed nonprofit fundraising direct mail appeals to be sent at existing reduced postage rates.
Santorum said his bill would clarify the “ambiguities in the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970” by allowing charities and faith-based organizations to share ownership of their mailings with commercial printing and mailing businesses and still qualify for the nonprofit mailing rate.
That provision, said Denton, would “open the door to serious abuse” of the reduced mailing rate that nonprofit organizations have, by law, enjoyed for decades.
But Mark Fitzgibbons, operations president and general counsel of American Target Advertising in Manassas, VA, noting Denton’s fears have been raised and dealt with previously, said the bills as written “just add more protections” to everyone’s satisfaction.
