The lease and maintenance on the machines costs $21,300 for the year. It collates, folds letters (including multiple pages) stuffs the envelopes, and seals the seals. Last WEEK alone it processed 4,000 membership cards. The other machine applies the postage. It weighs, checks size, and meters the envelope, then prints the correct postage on each piece. Last year it processed over 84,000 pieces of mail. We did NOT use it for handling renewals, since that comprises more than 100,000 pieces, and necessitates a higher-capacity machine—which is one reason why we use a separate mail house for that. The machines are also used for all of the Foundation mailings.
If we used something like stamps.com, we'd get postage... but that's it. So we are left to choose between spending the $21,300 on the machines or significantly more than that to hire (and train and insure) a staff to stuff, lick, and stamp envelopes every day.
I think sometimes, members don't grok the scale of operations at the office. Dig out the year-end stats from an AML Today and look at the number of phone calls and mailings the staff handle in a year. It's mind-boggling.
And yes, these are the actual machines in question; I just happened to be in the office this past weekend, so I snapped the pictures.
1 comment:
True, we don't often grok the scale of operations. This is why having some information is helpful. What you posted here was VERY helpful, not only to understand just how much mail is dealt with, but what the machines are actually capable of.
I've worked at one private company where I had to apply the postage by way of a simple postal meter, not unlike your second photo. I had to do all stapling, folding, and sealing of the envelopes myself. While the huge machine that does all the collating, folding, stuffing, and sealing wouldn't be affected by going with stamps.com, it seems like it might be possible for the other machine to be replaceable, at least based on the commercials I've heard. No idea what percentage of the $21,300 goes to the postal meter rather than the other machine. But the impression I got from the commercial is that the scale you attach to the computer to do the weighing is a one-time cost (possibly even free, somehow).
Back to my initial point above of a lack of information -- there is no way that any member would have been able to know what that $21,300 referenced generally, let alone this specifically, based only looking at the budget; there's no meaningful explanation of it in the footnotes.
While it looks, based on your information, like we don't have a reasonable alternate regarding the big machine (I'm assuming that lease is priced out every few years to have competitive costs), we may be able to save something by switching the meter's lease over to stamps.com. It might not be huge (I don't have the relevant figures related to the lease), but if a simple switch like that can help save several thousand dollars and not result in decreased efficiency that eats up that savings, then why not?
Granted, I don't know if that would be the case. But it sounds like the numbers should be easy enough for the N.O. to crunch (or to provide to you to crunch).
Again, thanks for this post. Very helpful insight.
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