I belong to the Rail Passengers Association. A recent email Hotline from RPA President and CEO Jim Matthews contained this bombshell:
A message from the President and CEO:
In a meeting with the U.S. Postal Service staff responsible for your Association’s nonprofit permits and services, I learned that when our supporters mailed us contribution checks using our postage-paid envelopes, postal clerks have been sending those envelopes to the dead-letter processing center instead of to us here at RPA.
The Postal Service believes that as many as 2,800 contributions, which could total as much as $160,000 of your contributions are either in the Atlanta shredder or scheduled to be destroyed. This explains why our revenue in recent months has tracked so poorly: our loyal supporters have been contributing, but the Postal Service has waylaid those contributions!
As a result, I cannot trust the Postal Service any longer to correctly handle any pieces of mail that do not involve a first-class stamp. THEREFORE, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, WE WILL NO LONGER USE A NONPROFIT U.S.P.S. PERMIT TO SUPPLY SUPPORTERS WITH POSTAGE-PAID RETURN ENVELOPES.
I apologize, but I must now ask that you put a first-class stamp on your envelope with contributions to our work. But clearly, with as much as $160,000 of our revenue now destined for the shredder, the best course of action is to make sure you can mail your check directly to our offices here at the Association for processing, or to encourage everyone to consider making donations online rather than via postal mail.
If you still have a stash of postage-paid envelopes from the Rail Passengers Association that you intend to use to send us a contribution or dues check, please discard them. Affixing a stamp will not work since there are still codes on the envelope that could send your mail astray. Please discard those envelopes.
Your support makes our work possible and I thank you for all you have done and continue to do for us. If you are able to help us with a new or replacement donation, it is very much appreciated and allows us to continue to focus on the issues that matter to you. You can mail a check to the office, or you can always contribute using our secure online donation system, you can do so by clicking here. It’s safe, secure, easy, quick...and completely free from the unreliability of the U.S. Postal Service.
So, the question is, is this just a problem for the RPA or is the problem more widespread? There should be no way postage-paid envelopes obtained with a non-profit permit from the U.S.P.S. should be getting misdirected like this.
Anyone in a non-profit organization using one of these permits who is seeing a drop in contributions and other issues communicating with their members may want to check on what’s really happening. Have you mailed in membership dues or a contribution, and had it go missing? Maybe this is why?
For this and many other reasons, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy needs to go.