At least one mailer group hopes Congressional opposition to the U.S. Postal Service's nonprofit cooperative mailing rules will help derail their implementation next week.
These rules “essentially make it legitimate for commercial fundraising firms who are more concerned with their own bottom lines than with helping any charities," said Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers. "We think it's significant that the ranking [Democratic] members of all the postal committees have come out against this rule and we hope the Board of Governors will reverse this ruling."
On Friday, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Rep. David R. Obey, and Rep. John W. Olver wrote to BOG chairman David Fineman and Postmaster General Jack Potter urging them to reconsider a change to the cooperative mailing rule set to take effect on Nov. 13.
"While other government agencies are increasing consumer protections, the Postal Service is moving in the opposite direction, in effect inviting unscrupulous marketers to flock to the mail," said Waxman in the joint letter. "The FTC, Congress, and the states have taken steps to protect families from unwanted commercial phone and email solicitations. Meanwhile, the Postal Service is opening the door to deceptive commercial mailings masked as nonprofit fundraising solicitations. This new rule will harm consumers who receive the mailings as well as the honest nonprofits that must compete with misleading fundraising requests."
Denton cited the recent case of commercial fundraising agency Vantage Group and its subsidiaries, which have agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle civil postal fraud charges.
The government's complaint, which named Henry R. Lewis (then Vantage's CEO) and Harry S. Melikian (then Vantage's CFO), alleged that while conducting fundraising programs for nonprofits, the company improperly mailed 78 million pieces of mail at the reduced nonprofit rate, knowing they were not entitled to use the rate for their cooperative mailings (Direct Newsline, Oct. 28).
He noted the apparent silence of the Republican chairs of these panels, which include the House Governmental Affairs and House Government Reform committees.
"Their attitude essentially seems to be to wait until see if abuses take place before they reconsider this rule," he said. "We'd rather prevent them in the first place."
