Why it matters
Donors move, and few of them tell you. Every letter sent to an old address costs postage and printing and reaches nobody, and a donor who stops hearing from you is a donor who quietly stops giving. Mail that comes back undeliverable is a sign your list needs cleaning.
NCOA processing is done by licensed service providers, often your mail house, and the Postal Service requires a move update check for discounted presorted mail. Run your list before each big mailing, such as the year-end appeal, and update the new addresses in your donor system so the next mailing starts clean.
How Steward shows it
Steward does not run NCOA processing. When you print acknowledgment letters, donors with no postal address are left out by name, so you can see whose address is missing.
Related terms
- Deduplication Deduplication is finding donors who appear more than once in your database and merging them into one profile, so each person has one giving history, one set of contact details and one total.
- Year-end appeal Year-end appeal is the name for the letter and email campaign a nonprofit sends in November and December, when many donors make their giving decisions before the tax year closes.
- Household Household means a group of donors who live together, such as a married couple, linked in your donor system so they can be thanked, counted and asked together rather than as strangers.
The free Lost & Found audit reads a giving export in your browser and shows your lapsing donors and what they used to give. Nothing is uploaded. Then bring the same file to a 20-minute demo.