The Postal Regulatory Commission ruled that all categories of Market Dominant mailing services, except Special Services, are in compliance with law and may take effect on January 22, 2017. The PRC will rule on Special Services later, as it was late in receiving necessary information on complex proposed changes.

This rates proposal was successful from the standpoint that it was approved basically as originally proposed by USPS, with a few minor adjustments. Some of these adjustments were driven by the need to set nonprofit work share discounts the same as commercial mail.

The main role for the PRC under today’s law is to ensure that postal price increases do not violate the price cap on each class of mail that in this case was just below one percent. Some very important segments of mail, however, will increase much more than the cap and be offset by reductions in other parts of their class.

Large increases include two types of mail important to nonprofit fundraisers: drop-shipped Standard Mail letters and Single-Piece First Class letters. These are business decisions by Postal Service leadership, and not an issue for the regulator to question as long as the weighted average within each class stays under the cap. Expect a decline in nonprofit fundraising by postal mail.