thanks for the info anne! i will do some more research.
thanks!

This is some information from a site called http://bulkmail.info/

"There are various levels of savings depending on how much how much of the postal service's work you are willing to do.

...if you are a nonprofit organization and have received approval from the USPS to mail at nonprofit rates. The nonprofit rate for the same piece of mail using Standard Class would range from 13.1¢ to 17.0¢.

Whether it's worth it for you to do the extra work to get to the next level of discount depends a lot on how many pieces you are mailing. For mailings of many thousands of pieces, you probably want to save as much on each piece as possible. For smaller mailings, the cost for additional software or the time you would spend on more complicated preparation is often not worth the few extra pennies saved.

For example, adding barcodes to your addresses would save you about 5¢ on the piece discussed above (less for nonprofit mailers). To add barcodes, you must have a perfect 9-digit zip code for every address. To do that, you either need to buy expensive software to verify your zip codes, or you need to send your list to an online zip code service. Either way, you quickly eat up the extra savings unless you are mailing thousands of pieces."

The PF has not done any major mailings to date because we have such a strong internet presence so the need for a nonprofit bulk mailing rate has not been as strong, though I know it is something we are looking into now that we are getting bigger. In my experience, you have to have at least 500 pieces and you have to sort by zip.

This also raises another issue that the Operations Team should consider, which is that at some point in our development, individual states will start raising enough annually that they will need to set up a legal nonprofit (preeclampsia.org/florida) for example and have a legal relationship with the PF. Essentially, this is an IRS test that depends on a formula based on annual income (per state) over a period of time and then averaged.

Thanks for raising the issue, Jodie, and for all the amazing work you do. Thank you so much for working so hard to get the word out.

Hugs!

Thank you all for the information. I will continue to do it the way I have been, I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing something.

If something changes, let me know!

Thanks!

Thanks for the note Laura and Fiona! And thank you Jodi for mailing out all of those brochures!! We don't have a bulk permit as of now but we should definitely look into it. I will put someone on that task [;)]

Laura, I already did.

I think that's a Jaime question, I'll send her the link to this thread!

Jodi, you're wonderful.

I have looked up bulk mail rates here locally and if I remember correctly, you had to pay something like $400 as a yearly fee for it to be set up. And then to make it break even in savings versus paying for the regular postage rate, you had to send something like 5000 pieces of mail per year at the reduced postal rate. So when you calculate $400 and the 5000 pieces at the reduced rate, it calculated into a rather large amount of money so I scrapped the idea. I'd suggest calling the local postal office and asking again what it would take to get it going in your area. It's also somewhat time intensive because you would have to sort the items by zipcodes as well before mailing.

Now, by the time you get done mailing out the last of our first batch of 100,000 .. we shall have to join you in PA for a fundraiser to print some more! You Go Girlie!!! hehehee

Jodi,

your energy is incredible. I'm off to find out the answer...

Ok, not quite sure if this is the correct place to post this, but hopefully if it's not someone can get it to where it needs to go. As most of you know I have been doing mailings to Doctors in PA, NJ, and DE (of the brochures.) So far I have mailed out 400, and I have another 100 sitting on my kitchen counter ready to go, they just need postage. I have no problem paying for it if there is no other way, I just wanted to ask if perhaps the foundation has a bulk mailing permit or non profit discount. The packets that I mail out use a .63 stamp. I just wanted to check and see before I sent these out.
I have no plans of stopping anytime soon, I'll do the whole USA if I can. So if it's based on volume, as long as you all can provide me with the brochures I will be more than happy to continue.
If someone could let me know, I would really appreciate it!
thanks!!!