Return to sender: college fundraisers have discovered that the database management of mailings can have a greater impact on the ultimate success of campaigns than anyone may have imagined. Enter address reclamation - Database Management & Integration

University Business, August, 2003 by Matt Villano

The promise of reaching that many more alumni is precisely what attracted Michael Larkin, associate VP for Development and director of Campaign Resources at Fordham University in New York City. Larkin signed with All Points this summer, after he received nearly 20,000 pieces of returned mail from a spring campaign to more than 105,000 alumni. These results prompted university officials to demand increased efficiency in future campaigns, and Larkin says he's hoping All Points can help him turn things around. If the company delivers what it promises, Fordham could reach an additional 15,000 alumni by the end of next year--an improvement that should net the school millions down the road.

"In order to cultivate a lifelong relationship with our alumni, we need to communicate better than we've ever communicated before," says Larkin. "From where we stand today, we see this as the best way to do it."

THE SWEET TASTE OF SUCCESS

Because so many schools are new to address reclamation services, perhaps the best demonstration of success lies with Schauble, the fundraiser at WSU. After coming to terms with the fact that he needed to clean up his database for the 2003 campaign, Schauble selected address reclamation firm Business Credit Information, Inc. (www.2bci.com), to clean things up. Representatives from BCI uploaded the WSU database to their system, ran it against the data in the NCOA, and applied a series of proprietary tests that incorporate the latest data from credit databases. At the end of the process, BCI had confirmed more than 100,000 of the addresses in the WSU record, and corrected nearly 4,800 bad ones. Schauble was delighted. He had agreed to pay BCI $1 per address for every address the company corrected, for a grand total of $4,800. On the flip side, after applying WSU's standard 15 percent success rate to the 4,800 new addresses, and forecasting that at least 720 former students would donate an average of $110 apiece, he estimates that the effort will net the school nearly $80,000 during the 2003 campaign. Factoring in savings an return postage and wasted printing, Schauble figures he'll hold on to an additional $20,000 on top of these profits. All told, he says, about $100,000 in combined profit and savings won't be a bad return on his investment.

"The amazing thing is that most of that money can go right into our endowment," he offers. "It's money we never counted on, and that's enough to make our administrators happy."

CHANGING NCOA

As times and technology change, so too does the National Change of Address database

For the U.S. Postal Service, updating the National Change of Address (NCOA) database has always been pretty easy. Via the use of some of the most sophisticated encryption technology on Earth, the USPS has sent licensees packaged and standalone electronic updates to the database each week, adding as many as 1 million new pieces of data every seven days. The process has been quick and straightforward, costing the USPS next to nothing. There was, however, room for improvement.