I started a weekday blog about 15 months ago with no subscribers and no real idea what I would be doing.  Today, with just organic growth I have almost 500 free subscribers who receive  my daily dose via e-mail and hundred of others who follow on Twitter and Facebook as well as those that just pick up an article here and there from our web connections.  It’s been somewhat humbling to hear from so many of you – from all around the world – that some of my ideas and comments have became part of your daily funeral home management.

After over 35 years in the funeral profession – and as open to learning as I’ve always been –  it amazes me that there is so much I didn’t know about.  Part of my impact at Funeral Director Daily is to open up to you points of view on other areas of the death care business and potentially help you profit from those ideas.

One of the great things about my Twitter followers is that I can see who they all are and learn something about them by visiting their Twitter or, in many cases, their web-site.  I’m here to tell you today about one of my followers from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and find out if there is a way that you can look at this business to help with ancillary profits for your funeral home.

The business I”m talking about is “We Tidy Graves“.  You can access their web-site here.  In essence, this company contracts with consumers to keep their family grave spaces clean.  They also do complete restorations on monuments and the like.  Their web-site will show you some before and after pictures.

I really thought about the potential possibilities of this type of business as ancillary income to our funeral home when, earlier this summer, I had a cousin die and be buried.  The family grave area is a 16-grave plot with, now, 15 lots occupied.  My cousins, prior to the burial and unknown to me, went out, cleaned and trimmed all of the existing graves – including my parents.  When we attended the funeral, I was amazed how nice the area looked.

So, have you ever thought of having a service connected thru your funeral home that would clean and tidy up graves in your area?  It would be a niche business but so are businesses like gutter cleaners in the summer and they seem to do okay.  Maybe, you could take orders during the 9-month school season and hire a couple of high school or college students in the summer to do the work.  The ideas are endless — you would have a better idea what would work in your locale than I do — but the idea here is to get you thinking about what kind of ancillary services you could offer to client families.

Whether you think about this type of service is up to you.  As for me, I’m just having fun looking at who follows Funeral Director Daily from around the world and figuring out how they make their living in the death care industry.  The more I look, the more I seem to learn.

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