boone graphics
Boone Graphics — the one source for all your graphic communications needs
At Boone Graphics, we're much more than just a printer. We have the resources and service philosophy to provide your business with front-end document creation through hard copy and electronic distribution. With our 14,000 square foot secured facility and over 20 highly trained professionals, we can create your image, manage your data, print your documents and deliver your messages, all under one roof and all with one accountability.
The Boone graphic design team are experts on mail regulations as well as flash and html for website development and email marketing campaigns. On paper our printing services cover a wide range of products from catalogs and brochures to posters and banners. You need direct mail? We partner with the US Postal Service, UPS and FEDEX everyday and are masters at sorting, cleansing and mining your data to minimize your distribution costs. Electronically we can build and maintain your website as well as create and execute an email marketing campaign to work hand-in-hand with your direct mail program.
Making your business life easier is our goal. Supplying you with one single source for the entire process, design to print to mail to web, is how we get it done!
Tips for Nonprofits
As a full service print and mail provider for nonprofits we see recurring issues with nonprofits that can save money and headaches by reduce printing costs. In addition there are a number of opportunities that nonprofits could take advantage of to better reach their donors. We hope that these “tips” are helpful for you because at Boone Graphics, we highly value the important work you do for our community.
When mailing as a Non Profit, please be careful of these common pitfalls:
Register with the USPS
Regardless of your nonprofit status with the IRS, you must register with the BMEU (Business Mail Entry Unit) to mail at the nonprofit rate.
Return address
Be sure the return address on your mail piece is identical to the address your nonprofit registered at the local BMEU, or Business Mail Entry Unit (Storke rd in Goleta is most common for Santa Barbara).
If the return address does not match EXACTLY your piece will be ineligible for the nonprofit discount.
For example: if you registered as: "I Love Santa Barbara, Inc" and mail as any of the following "I Love Santa Barbara" .... "I Love SB" than it will not qualify.
If you register with your physical address, but use a PO Box as your mailing address, again, it needs to match what you are registered as.
Cooperative Mailings
As a nonprofit, unless you are mailing a periodical, you are not allowed to have contact information (website, email or phone number) of any other organization, regardless of their nonprofit status.
The only exception is if that nonprofit is also registered at the same BMEU.
The most common issue is for art shows, photography sales etc.. Unless 100% of proceeds go to the nonprofit doing the mailing, it is considered a cooperative mailing. The logic behind it is that if the artist is receiving a portion of the sales, since they are not a nonprofit, this disqualifies the mailing as a nonprofit mailer. Regardless if the artist donates 99% of the proceeds, if they receive 1% of the proceeds from any sale, then the mailing will be disqualified from mailing at nonprofit rates.
Hand Written Notes
You are not allowed to send personalized hand written notes in a nonprofit mailing. Those all need to be mailed at first class rates.
Major Donors and Board Member Lists: pull these from your database and mail them separately. There is a very specific list of exceptions to this list.
Suggestions
Of course it’s not all bad, there are great things nonprofits can do with their mailings. My top suggestions would be:
Consult Before you Design
If the piece is going to be mailed out, and you want to do anything that is even slightly out of the ordinary please contact Boone or your mail house before you start. There may be a very good reason why no one has done that cool new design and it usually involves a bunch of money.
Data Base Integrity
Your mailing is only as good as the database you start with. If you can put it into the database, we can variably print it.
Donation levels : <(donation previous year) x 1.25> = "Thank you for your previous donation of <donation previous year>, your donation helped to fund <level 2>, we are hoping that you can continue to help this year with a donation of <(donation previous year) x 1.25>" (Of course, I am a printer, not a copy writer and I know most in the nonprofit world will be able to write better ask letters; but hopefully that gets the point across.)
Images: we can variably print images just as easily. Just be sure that your image name appears in the correct database field and we are supplied a folder of images. For example: If you receive an envelope a year after you adopt a kitten with a picture of the kitten when you adopted it on the outside with a message "Let us know how Kitty is doing" on it. Your contact will most likely be immediately engaged in your letter before even opening the envelope.