CBA will be attending and exhibiting at the American Library Association 2010 Annual Conference in Washington D.C. next week from June 24-29. Information about the event can be found on the ALA’s website here. Please stop by our booth #3957 — we hope to see you there.

As part of the conference, we’ll also be hosting a “High Tea” on Monday the 28th at 2:00pm at the Morrison  Clark Inn, 1015 L Street NW — just steps from the Convention Center.  Not only will we be serving free sandwiches and sweets but we’ll also be discussing and demonstrating how individual giving can build reliable revenues for your library for years to come.

Please RSVP for our “High Tea” by clicking here.

Experts-on-everything McKinsey & Co. issued its official recommendations to the US Postal Service at a conference in Washington this week.  While they are only recommendations and are non-binding (a USPS spokesperson said the consultant was instructed to “investigate all possible options”), Bloomberg News stresses in its report that not only would it be good to eliminate Saturday mail, but also 2 other days as well. (Read on …)

Earlier today, Postmaster General John Potter began to outline a proposed overhaul of the USPS that could include cutting Saturday delivery.

More from Fox News.

In a significant departure from their strategy of the last several years, the USPS made this announcement last week:

Simply stated, there will not be a price increase for market dominant products including First-Class Mail, Standard Mail, periodicals, single-piece Parcel Post.  There will be no exigent price increase for these products.

In doing so, they recognized that “increasing prices might have generated revenue for the Postal Service in the short term, the long term effect could drive additional mail out of the system.” The entire announcement is after the break.

(Read on …)

I have long been an advocate of using sweepstakes (or raffles) to raise money.  We had a very successful sweeps while I was at Thirteen and here at CBA, we’ve helped KQED run their very successful raffle for quite some time.

Sweeps got a bunch of bad press in the 90s as some of them (not ones that non-profits ran) were seen as deceptive, especially to the elderly.  As a result, many non-profits let theirs fall to the wayside (including Thirteen unfortunately).

That’s too bad, as sweeps can be very profitable because they give donors another way to give.  (Read on …)

Last month, CBA issued a report on public broadcasters’ results from our co-op campaigns in August and November 2008 to see how stations were weathering the economic storm.  While November’s results were encouraging in that they showed a recovery from a soft August, the jury was still out for a sustained recovery.

The verdict is now in and the results from March 2009 seem to confirm a very positive trend.  Significant improvement was seen in response rate and ROI across all major areas of fundraising: New donor acquisition, Lapsed member reinstatement and Additional Gift campaigns.  Average Gift was for the most part unchanged.

Here is a summary of those results.
(Read on …)

The Giving USA Foundation’s annual philanthropy report, released yesterday, indicates that while giving was down last year, it didn’t go down as much as people thought.  Specifically, it declined by just 2%.  But it was the second year in a row where total giving was more than $300 billion.  So, not bad, all things considered.  NPR’s Morning Edition has a nice summary on their website.

Numbers from our own clients are encouraging too.  Our experienced analytics team just completed a study comparing our August and November 2008 public broadcasting co-op campaigns — the first two campaigns right around the bad economic news breaking.  Overall, there was definitely a dip in August, but November rebounded quite nicely.  Whether that is a trend or not remains to be seen.

(Read on …)

On February 10, the USPS Board of Governors announced new postal rates for 2009 including a two-cent increase in the price of a First-Class Mail stamp to 44 cents. The new prices will go into effect Monday, May 11.

The new 44-cent rate covers the first ounce of first-class mail. The price for each additional ounce will remain unchanged at 17 cents.

The USPS also said customers can purchase Forever Stamps at 42 cents between now and May 11. Forever Stamps were developed to help consumers ease the transition during price changes. Forever Stamps do not have a denomination and will be honored whenever they are used with no need for additional postage for a 1-ounce letter mailing.

For more information, click here: http://www.usps.com/prices/pricechanges.htm