January 11, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Washington
The Postal Service announced today that it hopes to increase postage rates for charities early next year. The average rise would be 5.6 per cent for charities’ letters, but some groups could see the cost of sending certain types of direct-mail pieces such as magazines rise by as much as 15 per cent.
The increases, part of a plan to raise postage rate for all mailers, would be the first increase since January 1999.
The Postal Service also announced that it is seeking another change in the rates that charities use to mail their magazines, newsletters, and other publications. Instead of the separate class of mail for “non-profit periodicals” that exists now, the Postal Service is proposing that the same base rates apply to non-profit and commercial periodicals, but charities would receive a 5-per-cent discount on the commercial rate.
The proposal, which must now be approved or rejected by the Postal Rate Commission, an independent body that reviews all postage rate changes, has angered many non-profit leaders. They had petitioned the Postal Service’s Board of Governors to delay giving the rate commission the proposal for two months, when up-to-date information on mail volume and other facts used in determining postage rates, will be available.
The proposed rate increases, said Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, are based on “obsolete cost and revenue data from fiscal year 1998″ that is being used to project ahead for fiscal 2001. The data, he added, do not take into account the effects of last year’s postage increases, which generated $1.6-billion of revenue for the Postal Service and are likely to have affected mail volume and other factors that are used in setting new rates.
More information on the proposed rates, and detailed rate tables, are available on the Postal Service’s Web site, http://www.usps.gov/rates, and on the Web site of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, http://www.nonprofitmailers.org.
The Chronicle’s January 27 issue, which will be available on line as of January 23, will provide additional details.
