Be very careful about flyers in mailboxes ... I'm not sure how strict things can be (I am not a lawyer or legal expert) ... you don't know who's watching out to try and catch you up on doing something that you're really not supposed to be doing ...
After a bit of online research, I found the following ---
----- Section 1725 of Title 18 of the United States Code states that Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits any mailable matter such as statements of accounts, circulars, sale bills, or other like matter, on which no postage has been paid, in any letter box established, approved, or accepted by the Postal Service for the receipt or delivery of mail matter on any mail route with intent to avoid payment of lawful postage thereon, shall for each such offense be fined under this title.
The Domestic Mail Manual (which you can find on the Internet at www.usps.com) goes into more specifics. It states that no part of a mail receptacle may be used to deliver any matter not bearing postage, including items or matter placed upon, supported by, attached to, hung from, or inserted into a mail receptacle.
Section D041 of The Domestic Mail Manual also states the penalty for violating this section is that you pay the postage that you would have paid had you actually mailed your flyer. If you use the average of a 2.5 person household, you would have about 3600 mailboxes in a town of 9000. The fine, therefore, for stuffing all of the mailboxes in your town could run into the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
Advice, therefore, is to do what thousands of politicians do around the country in the days leading up to Election Day - put the flyer in the door handle, not the mailbox.
How about we put the flyers in the newspaper holders located next to the mailboxes? And, for those homes without these, we can just put them in the front door.
Newspaper boxes are fine. I had asked the postal carrier about the flag issue - he informed me that the outside of the mailbox was NOT the same as the inside of the mail box and it was fine to use it (the behind the flag option). As it gets warmer it is easy to go door to door and give them to the neighbors of leave them in the door. Email works great as well, but you get a better work out from going door to door.
Whatever you choose, anything helps! Get the word out. Get people to get involved and PLEASE do not let it end with THIS project...we should all stay MORE INVOLVED ON A REGULAR BASIS.
