Are Branches Doing Enough?

Are Branches Doing Enough?
By Dee Perez
NAPS Northeast Region Vice President

The most crucial aspect of a successful association ensuring its continued survival is to increase and maintain its membership, as well as attract younger members. Yet NAPS members and branches are struggling with signing new members.

If you know of a younger-generation postal employee or someone who has just been promoted to supervisor, Customer Service, or postmaster, yet has not become a NAPS member, ask them, “What are you waiting for?” NAPS is the best and largest postal management association.

Explain to them how aggressive upper management has been in issuing corrective actions for the slightest infraction. This never was the case previously. Today, there is very little empathy toward anyone who makes a mistake. It’s always business 24/7 for the USPS.

I know how busy you are every day, such as considering taking lunch is bypassed because you have other things to do that hour. This thought process is entirely wrong. I often make the same mistake: I prioritize the USPS over myself and my health.

I challenge every, single one of the 269 NAPS branches to consistently sign just three members a month for a year. I’m not challenging one person per se to do this. The makeup of each branch has several officers who should be helping with this task or forming a membership committee to meet this challenge.

From December 2024 to February 2025, NAPS Headquarters had a membership blitz, offering $50 for every new 1187 member signed, instead of the usual $25. The goal was to surpass the 30,000-member mark. We fell short.

We signed a total of 893 new members, which means NAPS Headquarters paid $44,650, which equates to an average of 3.32 members per branch. However, when spread over a three-month period, the average is only 1.11 new members per branch per month. This result proves several things:

1. Signing new members while doubling the standard fee resulted in an average of only 1.11 new members per month over the three-month experiment.

2. This effort did not add up to a thriving membership blitz.

3. If every branch signed three new members a month for a year, this would bring in 9,684 new members. Achieving 40,000 members certainly is doable.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy, at his inauguration, said to America, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Now, 65 years later, this famous quote applies to our beloved NAPS.

I’m not implying that NAPS is in trouble. A younger generation is quickly becoming the majority of the Postal Service, which faces many challenges and influences from outside the postal environment. Moreover, each branch now needs to make a more significant effort to sign three new members per month to strengthen the association, while also inviting the younger generation to join their branch.

Everyone needs to help grow NAPS to have a more substantial and respectable presence in every mail plant tour and area office—even at the district and USPS Headquarters levels.

Here’s my vision of where NAPS needs to be. We aim to achieve a membership rate of 85-90%, with a minimum of 40,000 members. The only thing that can stop us is ourselves.

We can achieve this vision if every branch focuses on signing three new members a month. MM = membership matters!