I live a split existence.  Part of my day is devoted to writing copy aimed at defeating Donald Trump and helping the people he harms.  The other part is devoted to ferreting out information and insights I hope are of empirical help to you and other Agitator readers.

This professional paradox is certainly present when it comes to the Postal Service.

On the one hand my keyboard is melting down producing alerts and appeals against Trump’s poisonous efforts to discredit vote-by-mail and destroy our democracy.

On the other hand, colleagues and clients are asking if the mail they entrust to the USPS will be delivered—and when.

The answer, of course, lies in data—not conjecture. That was the purpose of the post Nick and I wrote in early August– Death of U.S.Postal Service Exaggerated – that concluded, based on actual monitoring of outbound nonprofit mail,  that there had been no delay in delivery.

Of course, fundraising mail runs on a two-way street. 1) Mail goes out and is delivered; 2) Donors respond and mail back their contributions–unless, of course they forego the printed response form and reply envelope unless they choose instead to make their donation online.

Judging from some replies to our earlier post the most significant delay seemed to occur on the delivery time required for the donor’s return response—the contribution—to reach the charity.

We’re now entering that time of the year when many nonprofits depend more heavily than usual on the timely delivery and return of their year-end appeals and renewals.

Consequently, it’s quite timely that Nick Ellinger and his colleagues at the fundraising company Moore  have just published a white paper titled, The Swift Completion of Their Appointed Rounds: A USPS Update.    The paper –using data from both outgoing and incoming mail– covers delays (or lack thereof) for nonprofit marketing mail and first-class mail and highlights what’s hype and what’s real, as well as what is necessary for long-term USPS solvency.

You can download the white paper here.

Because most nonprofit direct mail is pre-sorted by your mail house to match the letter carrier’s route it doesn’t have to be sorted again by the Postal Service, thus saving USPS time and labor (the reason why postal rates for pre-sorted mail are lower).  This process is quite different than a personal letter or birthday card that goes through a far more complex sorting process at the Post Office.

Separating real issues from media hype, here are the key findings from data available to Moore and its clients:

• In April there was a dip in service because of COVID-19 staffing issues at various post offices; most severely in New York, Illinois, Detroit, and the DC area. Here’s the USPS Service Performance results for on-time deliveries that show the dip.

• “All available data from Moore companies was no delay in nonprofit fundraising mail since April.”

• “Looking at July data, our marketing mail was arriving in home in an average of .4 days longer than our year-to-date-average….”it is the same speed as marketing mail was delivered in January and May. In fact, it’s .1 days faster than marketing mail was delivered last year.”

• As of August 18, August first-class mail is coming in right at the year-to-date average.

• Production Solutions, a mailing management firm that’s part of Moore, also reports no significant delays for either marketing or first-class mail.

• Moore’s caging company, Aegis Processing Solutions, “reviewed their data and found no significant delays in inbound donation mail.”

All  this is not to say there aren’t some problems with the Postal Service; there are challenges with the delivery of veterans’ medication on some routes where mail is being delivered more slowly. But these pockets don’t represent a macro trend of delays across the board.

What about the November Ballots?  Well, as I started to write this post the news crossed that Trump has, once again, changed his tune.  He now is claiming that it’s local election officials, not the Postal Service, who will be the culprits when it comes to Vote-by-Mail ballots.

Whether that’s likely to be the case or not (likely not if folks vote as early as possible as they’re now being urged to do), what’s important to note is that even before Trump’s pre-change-of-tune concern about mail ballots, the fact that the Postal Service would be swamped was never that much of a concern.

Do the math. As Nick notes, “Even if all 153 million registered voters mailed in their ballots, the Postal Service handled 142.6 billion pieces of mail last year.  Thus, ballot mail would be slightly over 0.1% of total volume. Were it to all land on one day, it would be like a day in the Christmas holidays, and not even a particularly difficult one.”

Because outgoing ballots are pre-sorted there should be no delays outbound. The concern over delays should be over inbound, completed ballots where some states require them to be in election officials’ offices by election day, rather than postmarked by that date.

We’ll continue to watch and alert you to any change.

Roger