3 Reasons Your Nonprofit Should Run an NCOA Before Year End

Is it that time of the year already? It sure is. It’s time to create and send your end of the year appeals. It’s time for late nights, letter drafts, endless revisions, and mail house debacles in the hopes that there will be a surge of donations from each of your constituents. But are you even reaching all of them?

Before you put in all of the effort of sending your end of the year appeals, you should run a NCOA to ensure you are reaching the bulk of your constituents. Here’s why:

1. 17% of the American population moves each year. It doesn’t sound like much, but let’s consider this: If you send a mailing to 1,000 constituents and 17% have moved, you have missed 170 donors. If each of those donors were to give an average of $25, you would have missed a total of $4,250. Think of what you could do with those extra funds!

2. USPS requires an NCOA within 95 days to qualify for bulk mailing rates. The current cost of a stamp is 49 cents. But with bulk mailing rates, you can send non-automated machinable letters (letters without a barcode, in laypeople’s terms) for as little as 17 cents each. Let’s use the above scenario. If you send out 1,000 letters without bulk mail pricing, you’ll be spending $490; but after qualifying for bulk mail pricing after running a NCOA, you’ll only be spending $170. That’s a savings of $320!

3. You can’t retain your donors if you can’t communicate with them. The number one indicator of whether or not someone is going to give a donation is if they have given one in the past. As much as we wish our donors would pick up the phone or write us a letter first, it’s usually not the case. Therefore, it’s imperative to have the most up to date contact information, not only for your mailings, but stored in your donor database as well, readily available for future communications.

Running a NCOA before your year end of the appeals through Bloomerang is an investment of $425. You might be thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot!”  But let’s consider the numbers again: $4,250 in lost donations + $320 in lost bulk mailing savings = $4,570. That’s $4,145 more dollars coming into your organization that you wouldn’t have if you hadn’t invested the initial $425. Running the NCOA through Bloomerang will ensure that your addresses are updated in Bloomerang, too, so you know where to find your donors after the end of the year appeals are said and done.

Sending your end of the year appeals via email? Many of the same points above apply. Bounce rates will cause a similar equation that ends in lost revenue for your organization. Ask us about our email append services for more information.

If you’re interested in NCOA services, contact [email protected] to get started!

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