Funeral Director Daily

“Niche” Death Care appears to be continually growing

By Funeral Director Daily / February 24, 2025 /

    As I’ve told you before, I read the book Megatrends early in the 1980’s.  That book, written by John Naisbitt, enlightened me on how happenings of today’s world become trends and potentially “Megatrends” that can change society over time.  It also enlightened me that sometimes we can be fooled — some things that…

Hallowed Ground??

By Funeral Director Daily / February 21, 2025 /

    If you have ever served on a cemetery board — for profit, non-profit, church, or community — there is a pretty good chance that some type of dispute came before you.  It just goes with the territory of centuries old land and plot ownership of cemeteries.   The other day I read this…

Will DOGE eventually affect your revenue?

By Funeral Director Daily / February 20, 2025 /

    It probably does not matter which side of the political spectrum that you straddle in anticipating that what is happening with the new Department of Government Efficienty (DOGE) will change some things as they are related to current government payment systems.  Whether you are for or against the effort by DOGE it does…

Tariffs, acquisitions, leadership changes are most read articles of the past 30 days

By Funeral Director Daily / February 19, 2025 /

    It’s the middle of the month and here at Funeral Director Daily we always take that time to re-cap our most read articles of the past 30 days.  As usual, those articles don’t seem to take any one subject into consideration and this month our Top 3 articles deal with the Trump tariffs…

Teaching “Soft Skills” now a necessity

By Funeral Director Daily / February 19, 2025 /

    It’s pretty well documented that mortuary or embalmer education began in the late 19th Century with the advent of the practice of embalming.  Most of that early education for the profession was no more than a course in the practices of embalming.   Almost a century later when I went to mortuary school…

SCI 2024 4Q and Year-End Earnings Call: “$181 million in acquisitions during the year”

By Funeral Director Daily / February 18, 2025 /

    Yesterday Funeral Director Daily reported on the 4th Quarter and Year-End press release of Service Corporation International.  And, last week SCI also had it’s quarterly discussion with financial company personnel in which we peruse the transcript for more detailed information.   As has been our practice of late with this type of information…

Iowa funeral home announces “Unique Ownership”

By Funeral Director Daily / February 18, 2025 /

    According to this January article that I recently read from the Carroll Times Herald of Manning, Iowa, the Ohde Funeral Home of that community has recently came into new ownership.  The newspaper article made note of the fact that the funeral home “recently began a new chapter of compassionate care and trusted service…

“Mentoring” is the topic for CANA’s Peer Support group tomorrow night

By Funeral Director Daily / February 17, 2025 /

    I have to admit the subject kind of crept up on me faster than I thought because I had wanted to do a full-blown article on the value of the Mentor/Mentee relationship prior to this notice. . . .But, like a lot of things in my life – it didn’t get done in…

SCI Year-End Results: Revenue Up, Service Case Volume Down, Preneed brings questions

By Funeral Director Daily / February 17, 2025 /

    Service Corporation International (SCI) reported its 4th Quarter of 2024 as well as its 2024 Year End results last week.  Being as large a Death Care company as they are it is probably as close as one gets to an annual report on the status of Death Care in the North America when…

Authorities “claw back” about 10% of defunct preneed losses

By Funeral Director Daily / February 14, 2025 /

    Funeral Director Daily recently learned that holders of pre-need funeral plans from Safe Hands Plans, Ltd. will initially receive about 10% of their investment back as authorities have “clawed back” funds from resources left when the company was declared insolvent in 2022.  It is estimated that 46,000 consumers had invested in the British…