Rules for sorting newsletter labels:

By Sue Hill, February 1, 1999

By post office regs, we break things down into 4 groups:

D: All newsletters in any given D group must have the same 5 digit zip code.

3: This means that just the first 3 digits of the zip code is the same.

Almost all newsletters will be sorted into the above two categories. The D's are always separated first, and then the remaining newsletters are broken into 3 class bundles. The thing that has to be paid attention to is the totals: No bundle mailed may be smaller than 6, or greater than 25, thus if there's only 5 of the same exact zip code, it can't make a D bundle. 6 is the really important one. You can have more than 25 in a group of labels (all this really means is that whoever attaches those labels to Beacons at Assembly will have to break that bundle into two (or more) groups before putting rubber bands around them.), however, it's a better practice to split these groups when sorting the labels, instead of later, since sometimes people don't notice or think about the total when they're actually doing the labeling.

Now, once the bulk of the labels have been broken into D's and 3's, you'll find that most of the remaining stickers are all out of state. There are a few, however that are just from parts of Mass. that are so sparsely populated by our members that they don't seem to fit in anywhere. Hence, the other two postal classes we use:

A: I think the A stands for All (at one time, it was S, and that made MUCH more sense!). The only rule for this class is that every newsletter in it has to be heading to the same State. A few odd ones from Mass. usually end up in a bundle to themselves, as well as our New Hampshire subscribers. On occasion, there are other states as well, though lately there haven't been 6 or more of many others, so everything else falls into the last category...

MS: This stands for "Mixed State." Almost all of the labels on the last few pages that National sends us will be branded as such (those are all of the Corporate subscriptions... AMC members, and other newsletters participating in the exchange program). About the only thing that you need to pay attention to here is to break the list up so that there aren't more than 25 in each bundle.

The best way that I've found for keeping the labels together is to attach a paper clip (or two) to each group, sometimes folding the sheets of labels that are still together on the perforations, just to make them more compact. In one of the boxes over at Bill's house (if he hasn't given them to you already) are four bags, labeled "D", "3", "A" and "MS" (though I'm not sure about the A, I might have written S on that one). If they don't seem to be around, just let me know and I'll get you new ones... all they were was brown lunch-type bags, which I found a -huge- package of in the house one day (and I have no clue why, since I haven't brown-bagged my lunch since I was in grade school!).

Aside from that, there's only a couple of things I can think of to mention... One is that there's a separate, fairly small list that National sends us (I think in the same package as the newsletter addresses), of which all of the labels have the word "New" at the top, in the same place that the "2nd" specification can be found. These have been mixed in with the main group of labels in the past, and they should NOT be. These are duplicate stickers, given to us so that an official welcoming letter (or whatever) can be sent to these new members of the chapter, in addition to just suddenly starting to get the newsletter each month. Each member of this list already has their name in the main group of labels, so you can keep this second set for whatever communications you (or any Area Coordinators, or whoever) wish to do.

Also, Phil has been keeping the list for subscriptions -- those people who are either members of other chapters (or whatever) who want to receive copies of the newsletter. The most important thing is that these folks pay for this ($9.00 a year). I think that the way Phil has been handling this is by marking the expiration date of each subscription on that person's label. He's been printing them out the evening of Assembly, and handing them to me to bring, but I'm going to try to change that so that you can get them ahead of time, so that these can get sorted into their appropriate zip codes or states ahead of time. Will that work for you, or would you rather keep track of these yourself? (It's only about 15-20 or so names, takes up not even half of one of the usual address-size sheets of laser printer labels that Avery sells.)