Each year, 12.6% of Americans and 13.8% of Canadian households change addresses. In Montreal alone, more than 115,000 residents, nearly 7% of the city, relocate around Quebec’s traditional Moving Day on July 1. With so many donors on the move, nonprofit mailing lists can quickly become outdated. That’s where National Change of Address (NCOA) services come in. NCOA helps organizations keep their data current by updating and correcting donor addresses, ensuring your mail reaches the right people instead of being returned or discarded. In this article, we explore how SimpliPhi implements NCOA and why it’s a must-have for charitable organizations looking to reduce mailing costs, increase campaign efficiency, and improve donor data quality.
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National Change of Address (NCOA) is a secure database service maintained by postal authorities (like Canada Post and the U.S. Postal Service) that contains forwarding address information for individuals, families, and businesses who have moved and reported their new address. When someone files a change-of-address request with the post office, that record goes into the NCOA system.
Charitable organizations can compare their mailing lists against this NCOA database (via authorized service providers) to update donor addresses before sending out mailings. In short, NCOA lets you know where your donors are now, so your Direct Mail come to their new homes.
Keeping addresses up-to-date is crucial for charitable organizations. Let's look at potential numbers: 48 million Americans move each year (roughly 17% of the adult population). That means in a donor database of 15,000 contacts, as many as ~2,500 could have different addresses after just one year. If you don’t update your addresses, you risk sending mail to old addresses, resulting in undeliverable letters, wasted printing and postage, and lost fundraising opportunities.
Outdated addresses directly impact costs. Many postal services offer discounted postage rates for high-quality address data. Canada Post’s Address Accuracy Program requires that 95% of addresses on a mailing be valid to qualify for the best bulk postage rates. Similarly, in the U.S., the USPS mandates usage of an approved Move Update method (like NCOA) within 95 days of mailing to obtain nonprofit or Marketing Mail discounts. Falling below the accuracy standard can mean higher postage costs or penalties, while meeting it can save thousands of dollars in mailing fees. In other words, clean data = cheaper mail.
Mike Taylor, Information Systems Specialist at SimpliPhi, explains: “We’ve seen cases where improving a client’s address accuracy above 95% earned them roughly a 25% postage discount. If a nonprofit sends 20,000 mail pieces at about $1 each, that’s $5,000 saved on one campaign. Multiply that by several campaigns a year – the savings far outweigh the cost of NCOA Service.”
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SimpliPhi delivers NCOA processing in collaboration with Kopel, Canada Post SmartMail Marketing Expert Partner.
Bring your data to life. Kopel delivers reliable, compliant, and personalized mailings that leave a lasting impression. Their expertise ensures every communication meets postal standards and supports seamless, standards-compliant delivery, helping your campaigns build trust and demonstrate results.
Together, we help nonprofits reach the right people, clearly, confidently, and cost-effectively.
Lea Hardcastle, SimpliPhi’s Director of Professional Services, underscores the importance: “We encourage every nonprofit to run an NCOA Service at least once a year. It not only saves thousands of dollars on mailings by qualifying for better postage rates, but also improves the overall quality of your donor data for more effective fundraising and communication”.
SimpliPhi’s Data Health Services focus on two key practices that work together to keep your donor data clean and campaign-ready.
The first, NCOA, was just described. The second is: Duplicate Management
Once addresses are cleaned and standardized through NCOA, we can reliably detect and merge duplicate records. This eliminates redundant mailings, reduces confusion, and gives you a unified view of each donor’s history and engagement.
Together, these services create a dependable annual routine for maintaining data quality. With SimpliPhi handling the technical work, from address updates to CRM integration, your team can focus on using clean, accurate data to reach the right people and raise more funds.
NCOA is a small investment with big returns. It reduces returned mail, lowers postage costs, and improves outreach.
Many nonprofits run NCOA once a year, often in summer, to clean up their data before fall campaigns. If your donor list is out of date, SimpliPhi can help! We handle the details so your team can focus on building stronger donor relationships.
Talk to our team about running NCOA and Duplicate Management before your next campaign. We’ll help you save money, reduce waste, and connect with more of the right people.
