By Clint Carpenter

Nonprofit mailers will save more than $1 billion in postage as a legislative deal has tied nonprofit rates to those of commercial mailers, with a discount. That doesn’t mean rates won’t ever go up, but it now stops the annual fighting for preferential rates.

The legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and was awaiting the signature of President Clinton at press time.

If signed, the law is designed to protect preferred postal rates for nonprofit mailers. The law was drafted in sometimes bruising negotiations between the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, the United States Postal Service, The Direct Marketing Association, PostCom, and Magazine Publishers of America.

"We beat the odds by getting (the legislation) passed before the end of the session," said Neal Denton, executive director for the Alliance. "Instead of us having to fight for our own rate, minus a discount, we can take the current discount structure."

Under the new mandate the price of nonprofit Standard A-Class mail will be discounted 40 percent, and nonprofit magazine and periodicals will be reduced 5 percent, Denton said.

Gerald Cerasale, senior vice president of government affairs for New York City-based Direct Marketing Association said, "we are very pleased that the legislation passed before the Postal Rate Commission (PRC) came down with its decisions."

According to Cerasale, nonprofit mailers can now "walk hand-and-hand" with commercial mailers. "We’re ecstatic," he said. "We were worried that it wouldn’t pass (before the end of the session). It always worries us that things fall through the cracks. This allows us to work more closely with commercial mailers."

The PRC is expected to release its recommended rates within the next four weeks, and the USPS Board of Governors will likely issue a final decision on rate increases sometime in early December — with implementation in January or February, 2001.

Denton said the process has solidified the whole notion of coalitions and their effectiveness. "This is a celebration of how coalitions are supposed to work," he said.

The battle was even more arduous this year due to the partisanship of Congress in an election year. "It has been extremely difficult to move anything on Capitol Hill this year," Denton said. "They’ve been putting it off, and putting it off."

While stagnation is nothing new on Capitol Hill, the differences between the group of organizations pushing this legislation and former National Federation of Nonprofits, which was aquired by the DMA earlier this year, also prolonged the process. NFN had insisted that the Postal Service was unable to accurately measure rates of smaller classes and subclasses of mail, including nonprofit mail, and it wanted the rates rolled back two years. The NFN, under pressure from the others and the pending merger, last summer announced it would no longer oppose the bill.

Commenting on the implications of S.2686 in a written statement was John McHugh (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Postal Service, said, "This is an extremely important piece of legislation to ensure the financial viability and survivability of nonprofit mailers," McHugh said via the release.

According to the Alliance, without the legislation, the PRC would have been forced to propose crippling, double-digit postal rate hikes for nonprofit periodicals and local, community-based nonprofit charities and churches.

Christopher Cleghorn, senior vice president of direct marketing for National Easter Seal Society in Chicago and president of the board of the Alliance, considers the outcome an "important accomplishment" for all nonprofit mailers. "I consider it one of the major accomplishments in the last 20 years," he added.

According to Cleghorn, the cost estimates for nonprofit mail have not always been consistent over the years, and S.2686 will clarify postal rates significantly. He also said all nonprofits that use the rate owe a debt of gratitude to those who battled for the law.

"This has really been a slippery-slope for nonprofit mailers," Denton noted of the arduous lobbying process. "(But) we’ve driven a stake in the ground and there will be no more sliding."