As a national association, AARP has no higher priority than to empower people to choose how they live as they age. Key to supporting this mission is providing excellent service to the organization's 38 million members. And one important means of serving members is responding to their communications, the vast majority of which arrive via the U.S. Postal Service.

"The most common forms of mail we receive include membership join and renewal requests, donations to the AARP Foundation, correspondence around our advocacy work, responses to questionnaires, and advocacy petitions," says Jim O'Brien, vice president and assistant treasurer for AARP. "That said, the written correspondence we receive covers many topics.

"A letter may be notification that a member has passed away, or has gotten remarried," he continues. "Someone might be requesting additional copies of the magazine. They might want us to know their partner has dementia. They might want information about caregiving. These communications arrive in all forms, including handwritten notes in cursive, which no machine can read. And the list of topics goes on and on—and on."