Funeral Director Daily

Modern morticians need to be “Facilitators of Choices”

By Funeral Director Daily / July 15, 2024 /

      I’m guessing that if somebody asked you to picture an “old time mortician” in your mind, you might think somewhat like I do and picture that pioneer mortician so often portrayed from the days of the United States westward expansion during the 2nd half of the 1800’s.   That time period between…

A roadblock in Delaware

By Funeral Director Daily / July 12, 2024 /

    All states have some type of restriction on who can fill in and file death certificates online.  And, in most states, that responsibility lies many times with licensed funeral directors and morticians.  This article from Delaware Public Radio WDDE tells us of a discrimination lawsuit being filed by the American Civil Liberties Union…

Family-run firms expand in Indiana and Wales . . and “Have it All”

By Funeral Director Daily / July 11, 2024 /

  For the past three days Funeral Director Daily has ran feature articles that deal with the major public companies in our profession — Matthews International, Service Corporation International, and Carriage Services.  While lots of attention goes to those big companies I continually remind myself that “Death Care” is a local and home-grown business.  …

Will Carriage Services be next?

By Funeral Director Daily / July 10, 2024 /

    It’s been less than a month since a partnership of Homesteaders Life and private equity firm Birch Hill Partners announced their intention to acquire 100% of public funeral home and cemetery operator Park Lawn Corporation.  As a matter of fact we are still about three weeks out from the July 29 stockholder vote…

Global Atlantic, SCI form preneed partnership

By Funeral Director Daily / July 9, 2024 /

    It was announced in this press release yesterday from Global Atlantic Financial Group (Global Atlantic) that the company had formed a partnership with the largest provider of funeral, cemetery, and cremation services in North America, Service Corporation International (SCI).   Announced in the press release as a “10-year partnership, Global Atlantic says it…

Don’t miss this CX learning opportunity

By Funeral Director Daily / July 8, 2024 /

  A quote from John R. Dijulius III goes like this “If you want to see how a company is doing today, look at their current sales; if you want to know how a company will perform in the future, look at their current Customer Satisfaction scores”.   Customer satisfaction has always been a goal…

Matthews International, EV automaker Tesla at odds over lawsuit

By Funeral Director Daily / July 8, 2024 /

    Matthews International is a company that according to this rating action from Fitch, collects 45% of its revenue from its Memorialization Segment and also brings home approximately 60% of its EBITDA from that source.  As you may know, Matthews International is the parent company of Aurora Casket and Matthews Cremation and  other death…

Minnesota’s “Transfer Care Specialist” category is now effective

By Funeral Director Daily / July 5, 2024 /

    In an effort to help alleviate some of the worker shortages in the funeral home profession the State of Minnesota Legislature passed what is known as the “Transfer Care Specialist” category for funeral homes this past session.  That category of workers became effective on July 1 and is now in effect.   In…

The story of the “Last Signer” of the Declaration of Independence

By Funeral Director Daily / July 4, 2024 /

  A rallying cry for colonists in pre-independent America was “No taxes without representation”.  That basically referred to the act of taxing the colonies through British laws where colonists had no say, or vote, in the matter.   However, most people don’t realize that one of the last indignities for this growing independence movement was…

Nebraska board member proposes columbarium under the football field

By Funeral Director Daily / July 3, 2024 /

    The University of Nebraska is evidently facing a $58 million budget shortfall  for the coming season and ideas to eliminate it are coming forward.  One such idea mentioned in this article, proposed by Nebraska regent Barbara Weitz, is to build a columbarium under the football field where departed fans can have their cremated…