July 2019

Page A20 JULY 2019 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS S ec t i on A XL industries inc. Call: 406-449-4100 • Visit: www.XLIndustries.com Available Through Quality Suppliers Ladder Racks with adjustable shelves Basket Stands Portable Folding Register Stands Made in USA Quality & Value - Built Just for Funeral Homes! Providing the Best-Designed Tools for Your Services Since 1926. Dozens of products that give you years of service and store compactly when not in use. Lightweight and easy to take to gravesides or churches. Nesting Stands ® “The Original Casket & Vault Combo” www.mccordcasketsandvaults.com • Email: mccordcasketsandvaults@yahoo.com PO Box 646, Bowling Green OH 43402 Independent & Family Owned Since 1945 Order direct at: 1-800-782-8249 Free UPS Ground Shipping 1' $140 2' $290 3' $350 4' $460 Community Outreach I just read an article that speaks to how families will not remember what products you offered to them at their time of need. They will remember how you “made them feel.” Walking into a funeral home is probably the hardest thing a family needs to do to take care of their loved one’s final disposition. More families than ever are not looking at cas- kets and burial vaults. They are looking for guidance on how to celebrate a life and how to deal with their grief. The trend is also that families are figuring out how to create their own celebrations of life, without the help of a funeral director. So how do you create opportunities to help your families feel cared for by your funeral home? I have talked about many different grief resources during the past months. This month, I want to focus on commu- nity outreach opportunities that you may want to consider. I work for a funeral home that fills a yearlong calendar with classes, seminars and events. They sponsor bus trips, theme dinners, luncheons and brunches, educational seminars on many different subjects, grief classes, workshops and sup- port group sessions. It is amazing all that this funeral home offers to their families and community – free of charge. I have to believe that this funeral home has built some very solid relationships and have made their families “feel” cared for by all that is made available to them after the funeral. Buying a casket or burial vault does not create this same feeling. It is a business transaction to obtain a necessity. meet with them once a week, or month, and have a suc- cessful, well facilitated support group. With no support group facilitator training, you will have little or no success with running a support group. More reason to partner with a Hospice who already runs many support groups. Have you ever heard about Aftercare Support Spe- cialist Certification? I will share more information about this special certification in an upcoming article. Obtaining this level of certification will give you the confidence, knowledge, skills and tools to implement a high quality Aftercare Program and all that it will en- compass. It is not just knowledge based training. It is certification that includes everything you will need to successfully offer and provide an aftercare program for your families and community with a level of care that has never been established before. The results of a successful aftercare programwill show in the amount of care the family “feels” for having received it. This certification is going to be a great opportunity for you to explore. The standard of care in Funeral Service Aftercare has finally been established. By Linda Findlay Aftercare Linda Findlay is the founder of Mourning Discoveries, Grief Support Services. She is a 28 year career “Aftercare Coordinator,” a published author, an advocate for bereaved families and the found- er and co-creator of Journeys of Hope Grief Support Outreach Programs, coordinating and hosting seminars and events, includ- ing the first and only Bereavement Cruise that provides extensive programming exclusively for grieving families. Linda has developed comprehensive aftercare programs that are used in over 300 funer- al homes in 25 states. Linda has supported and worked with thou- sands of grieving families across this country. She has visited and provided support for grieving families in their homes and through Funeral Homes, Hospices and faith-based organizations. She has created, facilitated, participated in and coordinated hundreds of workshops, services of remembrances, and support groups. Linda is a lay counselor for a Christian Care Ministry in Greenville SC. Her highest honor is to enter people’s lives and help make a differ- ence. Linda can be reached at 315-725-6132 or you can visit her websites at www.mouringdiscoveries.com and www.j3hhh.com, or email Lf6643@yahoo.com . www.nomispublications.com Funeral Home & Cemetery News Contributors share insights and exchange ideas. Blogs It is building those relationships that I believe can and will ac- complish a couple of goals that all funeral homes need to em- brace in order to survive and thrive. With that being said, I know that most funeral homes will not have the funding to of- fer such a wide variety of family and community outreach. But this does not mean that you have no options, because you do. Consider this first: According to the NFDA, by 2035, the cremation rate is projected to be 80%. The speculation is that loved ones will find little need for a funeral home. You need to ask yourself, “What am I going to do about this?” I believe that one option can be found with your aftercare and community outreach efforts. If you do not have a solid plan to follow up with your families, you are missing the greatest opportunity to foster strong relation- ships with your families and your community. You do not need a lot of funding to host an event that your families and community will find useful and inviting. An option that you may want to consider is partnering with your local Hospice organization. They usually coordi- nate different community outreach events throughout the year. There have been many times through the years that I partnered with a Hospice on behalf of a funeral home that I worked for. Each one was well planned and attended. If you do not already have a relationship with a hospice on this level, you may want to consult with them to discover any opportunities that they may offer. You may want to coordinate a grief support group. Many funeral directors have told me that they don’t want to get in- volved with “running” a support group. Many don’t feel they have time to run a support group. I have also been told, many times, that funeral directors definitely are concerned with the fact that they feel that they are not qualified to facilitate a grief support group. You all know the fine line between support person and perceived “grief counselor”. We are very careful to make that distinction when working with grieving families. This is a very legitimate concern. You can’t just take anyone and put them in front of a group of people who are grieving, YORKVILLE,IL— A new coalition of independently-owned fu- neral establishments have come together in effort designed to help them compete with large corporate interests entering the death-care industry. Under the name, The Commander Initia- tive, this group comprises around 150 funeral homes, funer- al service providers and trade embalmers working with major suppliers of death-care products and services to organize group purchasing that will lower costs and overhead. “We know that independent funeral businesses have trou- ble competing against large corporate-owned funeral homes,” says Eddie Pitt, president and CEO of Cooper Profession- als, LLC, a 30-year veteran of the death-care industry who started The Commander Initiative. “Our goal is to create the The Commander Initiative: Funeral Homes Create “Economies of Scale” through Group Purchasing Eddie Pitt same ‘economies-of-scale’ cor- porations have by coordinating purchases of smaller compa- nies to match the buying volumes of the big firms. Pitt said the vision of the program immediately resonated with his main client base of African-American funeral profes- sionals, but quickly spread “because what’s good for African- American funeral homes is good for all independent funeral establishments.” As a result,The Initiative now has Command- er Partners (as the members are called) from every ethnicity spread across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. Major suppliers of death-care products and services have also responded enthusiastically, the first of the buy- ing pools include Chinese-made caskets “at container pric- es,” according to Pitt and a credit-card processing system designed exclusively for initiative members. Pitt estimates that within few months, the “Commanders” will be able to purchase nearly every product and service needed for fu- neral operations at prices and terms not normally available to smaller, independent funeral providers. At present, there is no-cost or obligation for funeral homes to joinThe Commander Initiative, but Pitt says that could change once all the program’s suppliers are in-place. “It’s important that funeral homes coming into the programhave the same level-of- interest as the establishments that helped us start the program, so a membership fee might be necessary,” Pitt said. Membership in The Commander Initiative is limited to owners and authorized managers of independent funeral homes, funeral service providers, trade embalmers, cem- eteries and crematoriums. For more information, call Ed- die Pitt at 888-610-3394 or visit the Cooper Professionals website at www.cooperprofessionals.com and go to More > Become a Commander Today!