The U.S. Postal Service has been authorized by its Board of Governors to refund thousands of dollars in excess postage to nonprofit mailers who paid more than commercial mailers to send publications without advertisements to their members.
The refunds are retroactive to January 10, when commercial rates went up by an average of 3% and nonprofit rates rose by an average of 18%.
Industry groups praised the move, which was unanimously endorsed by the Postal Rate Commission last month.
Lee Cassidy, executive director of the National Federation of Nonprofits, Washington, DC, praised postal governors for “doing the right thing.” He said the refunds, ranging from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, may be minuscule for the USPS but significant for the nonprofit groups that overpaid for their mailings.
The postal governors, he added, “recognized that the earlier decision of management in the case before the Postal Rate Commission leading up to the January 10 rate increase was arbitrary and unfair.”
Both Cassidy and Amy Gotwal, assistant director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, Washington, DC, said they were pleasantly surprised that the BOG made the refund program retroactive to January since the USPS originally wanted it to go back only to April 9 when it asked the PRC to endorse its corrective action.
Gene Del Polito, president of the Advertising Mail Marketing Association, Washington, DC, credited Postmaster General William J. Henderson for the refund’s retroactivity. Henderson, he said, “recognized an inequity that was begging for relief.”
The postal governors also authorized nonprofits to mail their publications at commercial rates starting August 1 as long as those rates are less than the comparable nonprofit rates.
