Why did it take so long for my fund drive or subscription program to be delivered?
Since you are sending your fund drive or subscription program using "standard mail" the United States Post Office DMM (Domestic Mail Manual) states that this "class" of mail can be delivered within 30 days. What this means to you is that once we deliver your materials to the Post Office, they can take up to 30 days to deliver it to your residents and businesses. This is not something we can control! It is entirely up to the Post Office as to when they deliver "standard class" mail.

What is your fax number?
The fax number for the Pittsburgh Office is: 866-MMS-FAX1 or 412-367-0189 and for the Avondale Office: 610-268-5751. Please check with your sales representative or sales office to determine the correct office for faxing of information.

Where should I send information?
ALL processing is done in our Pittsburgh Operations Center. This includes all file maintenance, typesetting, accounting, donation posting, etc. Sending information to the Avondale Sales Office or any other address will delay processing of your drive. Check with your sales representative or sales office to determine the correct address to use.

What does RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED mean to me? I got a bunch of envelopes back from the Post Office, NOW WHAT?
Return Service Requested is a United States Post Office option which, in a nutshell, keeps your mailing list more up to date.

It works this way: you send out a piece of mail which has RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED in the appropriate place on the envelope. If the person you are sending the mail to has moved, the property is vacant, or it is a bad address, the post office will RETURN that piece of mail to you for $.41 (if your mailing weighs 1 ounce or less) with a yellow sticker on it showing the reason the piece of mail was not deliverable (moved, vacant, bad address, etc.).

OK, I know, you are saying you are not going to pay $.41 to get back your mail. But think of this: when MMS gets this piece back from you with your maintenance, we change your mailing list for that piece of mail to say RESIDENT instead of the person's name. Then, when you are ready to send out your second mailing, that piece goes out as an original, not a reminder.

So, the bottom line is that if only 1 or 2 of these resent originals are returned with donations or subscriptions (depending on the size of your list - see example below), you have more than paid for your returns from the post office.

If the resent piece is returned with a donation,  then you have the new resident's correct name for next year's mailing AND we will make the update in your file. Now you have a more up to date mailing list and you make your organization look much more professional.

A simplified example:

Your 2,000 piece mailing goes out
    100 pieces come back from the Post Office with address corrections
        (that would cost you $41.00)
    Those 100 pieces go back out as originals when your second mailing goes out.
    3 people out of those 100 donate $30.00 each.
    You get $90.00 in donations! You made money ($90.00 minus $41.00 cost) on the returns AND your list is more up to date AND you look more professional because now your donation request is addressed to the right person!

I want to send my new list to you on a disk or e-mail it to you.
No problem, just take a minute to read the information contained here, follow the instructions and we will be glad to help you.

MMS did my fund drive or subscription program. Now I have a bunch of returned envelopes (if you used RETURN SERVICE) and the forms returned from the people who made donations. Now what???
If you are using a program which provides for maintenance (Silver or above), then bundle all of the envelopes which you have received, along with the donation forms returned by your contributors to the Pittsburgh office of Municipal Marketing Services.

Our Data Entry team will process this file maintenance, and if you are ready for your second mailing (Gold package or above), begin that process as well.

When the file maintenance is returned, you will receive several Audit Reports showing EXACTLY what maintenance was done to your file. It will list any name changes, any deletes made and the dollar amount of any postings. 

You will also receive a very important report. A DONATION STATISTICAL REPORT BY AREA will show you each area on your mailing list, the number of addresses who have contributed, the average contribution, and a 5-year history for each area.

This critically acclaimed report will also list totals of the above, and a "financial statement - profit or loss summary" which details important items such as the number of new donors this year, the number of donors which donated last year but not this year, the number of donors who donated more this year than last and many, many more useful statistics.

There is a problem with my fund drive or subscription program and I'm awfully mad about it!
We're sorry! We have a pretty good quality control process in place (so does Ford, GM and Chrysler, right?!?) but occasionally, much to our embarrassment, sometimes a problem occurs.

Remain calm, call your Sales Representative and explain the problem to them. They will work with management to make it right for you.

You are important to us and we are truly sorry that you had a problem with your fund drive or subscription program. We work very hard to make sure that each and every customer of Municipal Marketing Services is happy and satisfied with our service - we want you to be satisfied too!

I'm putting our mailing list in our station computer to use for something. Can you send me a printed copy of my list?
Sure, and we can even do better than that. We can send you your list (in plain text format) on disk or e-mail your list to you. Then, all you have to do is import this information into your computer and use it. For more information of what we can supply and the format of the data, click here.

The file which we send you will be in tab delimited, text format and can be imported into any database, word processing or spreadsheet you may be using. That way, you can change and manipulate the data to the format you need.

This file will include the reference number, name, extra address, address, city-state-zip, area number, class code and your donation history - all of the same information maintained in the MMS Mainframe computer. Click here for more info.

I got a bill for postage and a bill for my fund drive or subscription program, can I write one check?
NO! The check for postage MUST be made payable to POSTMASTER so that the postage for your program can be paid directly to the Post Office.

Naturally, your check for the program bill should be made payable to Municipal Marketing Services, Inc.

Both checks, however, should be mailed to the Pittsburgh Office to ensure proper credit of your account.

Can I request a specific delivery date for my mailing?
Not really. We can deliver your mail to the Post Office by a certain date, but when they deliver it is really up to them.

According to the DMM (Domestic Mail Manual) the Post Office can take up to 30 days to deliver Standard Rate mail.

And further, if you are sending mail to CURRENT OCCUPANT, the Post Office can and will dispose of any mail that is not deliverable. (See the question about RETURN SERVICE.)

A competitor of yours said you are too small to handle my fund drive or subscription program.
Well shame on them! Actually, if you just take a minute to browse through some of the pages on this website, I think you'll see that with having served over 2,600 customers, maintain nearly 10,000,000 addresses and process well over 18,000,000 pieces of mail each and every year, we can't be too small and we've been doing this since 1980! Can our competitor say that about themselves? Probably NOT!

We've been in business since 1980. We are truly the industry leader and pioneered direct mail fundraising for fire departments and EMS organizations in 1980. How long has the competitor been in business??

We know how to do it and we know how to do it right!

Now you sound too big to handle my 700 name mailing list.
Not true. We have customers whose list contains 100 names and we have customers whose list contains 100,000 names! And of course, lots of customer lists in between those numbers.

No matter what the size of your mailing list, Municipal Marketing Service can help you with our PROVEN programs!

I'm ready to go, how do I get started?
Just call your sales office or sales representative and they will arrange a FACE-TO-FACE meeting to go over your materials and get your subscription program or fund drive setup and ready to go. Click here for help.