(NBC12)
In December, the busiest month of the year for charitable donations, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture received only seven pieces of mail.
What the museum did get: dozens of calls from supporters asking why the institution — Virginia’s oldest museum, now operated as a private nonprofit — had not cashed the checks they had mailed.
Then, in late January, “magically three cases of mail showed up postmarked in October and November,” said president and CEO Jamie Bosket. “That bundle of mail that came represented about $300,000 in memberships. … We still expect that we have maybe as much as $100,000 in missing donations.”
Bosket wasn’t alone in his experience. During a Friday roundtable at the museum convened by U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, residents and representatives of businesses and groups in the Richmond area reported a spike in problems with mail delivery throughout the fall that they said have yet to be resolved or explained.
Mike Nolan, a resident of Richmond’s Bellevue neighborhood, said while mail delivery “has never been good,” beginning this September, critical pieces of correspondence ranging from his electoral ballot to utility bills to government missives failed to show up at his house. Complaints got him nowhere, he said. One postal worker told him to contact U.S. Postmaster Louis DeJoy.