Community Crowdfunding for Funeral Directors by Funeral Directors

Many funeral homes have experience with a  young child passing away in their community. 

The family  inquires about services after this sudden, tragic death of a loved one.  Many funeral homes offer to donate goods and services, but the funeral home still needs to cover cash advance items like published obituaries, cemetery open and close, death certificate filing, and more. Then the family and friends, with good intentions, set up a fundraiser using an online crowdfunding platform. 

A genuine action to help the family  inadvertently begins to reflect negatively on your funeral home, making it appear as if you didn’t help them out at all. All this, while the real story is that the funeral services have been donated.  The general public most likely doesn’t know this and doesn’t consider what is happening behind the scene.

“When a community is coming together to help a family in need, that’s good.   However, they should consider all needs of the family, not just the cost of the funeral”,  shared Jimmy Altmeyer, President of Altmeyer Funeral Home and Founder of Treasured Memories.

Similar scenarios encouraged Jimmy and his team to create Treasured Memories Community Funding (TMC Funding): an online fundraising platform created for funeral professionals, by funeral professionals. TMC Funding allows funeral homes to bring crowdfunding in-house while securing funds for families in need to better serve their communities. 

Ultimately, this demonstrates your commitment to providing exceptional care while enhancing your firm’s public image.

Other community funding platforms exist by taking a portion of the funds raised. Treasured Memories has a 0% platform fee and we provide our services through donor tips.   100% of the donations will go to the family or charity of choice.

Treasured Memories Community funding not only helps a family pay for their loved one’s services, it can also be used to raise money for memorial donations, charitable events, sponsorships and other community organizations. 

“When we built the platform, we were focused on families in need,” explained Jimmy. “What we actually found out is that only 30% of the fundraisers are for families in need. 70% of the funds raised are for successful community outreach and memorial donations.” Crowdfunding can help funeral providers with all types of fundraisers:

Family Support – Funds can be raised for families in need of assistance with funeral, medical and other unexpected expenses.

Memorial Donations – Charities and organizations in someone’s name or in

support a family.

Charitable Events – Raise funds for a specific event happening in your community.

Community Fundraisers – For a local organization in need of support.

Support for Veterans – Raise funds for Veterans’ medical assistance, housing or other necessities.

Loving Pets and Animals – Raise money towards furry friends that require medical assistance, shelter or other efforts.

Community fundraising  opens the door for many funeral homes to support their communities.  When a fundraiser is created, the funeral home has the opportunity to help share the family’s story. 

Both the family and funeral home can begin sharing the fundraiser on social media.  Once the fundraiser is complete, the funeral director can present the check to the family or the organization of their choice.  

“Treasured Memories Community Funding has helped us build relationships in our community.  It has given the funeral home an opportunity to show how families impact the charities in their loved one’s memory,” shared Craig Roe, Vice President and General Manager for Michigan Memorial Funeral Home in Flat Rock, MI.

The increased  publicity will impact your funeral home’s reputation in a positive way .

Treasured Memories Community Funding presents opportunities to follow up with charitable organizations creating community engagement.  Outreach events have the potential to create a cycle of education, community involvement and positive attention for your funeral home.

For more information regarding community fundraising or getting started 

on our platform, please contact us at tmcfunding.com/contact-us.

A Little About Our Founder:

Jimmy Altmeyer, President of Altmeyer Funeral Home & Founder of Treasured Memories, graduated from Villanova University (BA, 1988) and Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science (Associate’s, 1989). He and his wife, Jocelyn C. Altmeyer, have three children: Simon Cameron, James Elijah, and Justine Virginia.

Last week it seemed that every time I turned around I heard a news story about debt. . . . Here’s one that’s titled “Over nine million student loan borrowers could see their credit scores tank as delinquencies are poised to hit record highs“.  Or this one from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York titled “Household debt balances continue steady increase; Delinquency transition rates remain elevated for auto and credit cards”. 

Even our nation’s financial well being is in the news — here’s a story about that titled “U.S. could run short of money to pay its bills by August without a debt limit deal, CBO says.”

Any way that you look at it I think you will find a certain portion of our society living in a world where one missed paycheck or one bad incident could spiral their financial well-being down.  And, according to this article from Great Britain, it’s a problem in Death Care there — that is families not having enough resources to fully pay a loved one’s funeral bill.

If you are operating a funeral home there are times when compassion reigns and you have to make the decision to provide services without a guarantee of payment.  It may not be the best business practice but it just is the way that most Death Care practitioners are wired.

However, if you are not getting paid what you deserve for conducting funeral services the long-term consequences over time are not good.  Here’s an article titled “Is continuous accounts receivable a problem?”  I suggest you read it just for a little reminder that growing accounts receivables can sink a great business.

So, I think it behooves every funeral home and cemetery to have many tools in their toolbox for helping clients pay for the services that they are provided.  Those tools should include pre-arrangments with financial arrangements tied to them, down-payments, the use of credit cards, the acceptance of insurance funding, and more.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

And, in the world we live in today, one option for families to pay their obligations may be through community funding — most often referred to as “crowdfunding”.  When you think about it, online community funding today is not so much different than what happened for decades when friends, relatives, and acquaintances stuffed cash or checks into memorial cards to be used by the family.

For sure, many of these donations were for “memorials” and expected to be used “in memorium” of the deceased.  But, I conducted enough funerals over the years where friends and relatives hoped that the money they put forward would go towards the family paying a funeral bill that might have been out of their current reach without help.

I recently became aware of a community funding product that can be used for this purpose.  Take a look at what Treasured Memories Community Funding has been able to do for people by clicking here.  They can help families collect funding for “Memorial” projects or other uses.

As a matter of fact, Treasured Memories Community Funding can be used by funeral homes and aligned with others in their communities to raise funds for a variety of uses — memorials, family help, charitable events, community fundraisers, and more.

Take a look at this page on their website and you will see some stories where Treasured Memories Community Funding helped children whose mother passed away, helped start an education fund for children whose father passed away, and, yes, even helped families raise money to pay for funeral costs.  You will also find a “Memorial Fund” music foundation started to raise money in memory of a person who loved the arts.

I’m in the Baby Boomer generation and our generation has grown philanthropical giving.  Generally, we give to organized causes, especially those we can get a tax deduction from.  It’s how we grew up.

However, if we look to the Millenial generation (born between 1980 and 1999) who are between 25 and 45 years of age at this time, we see that they are already making their mark in charitable giving.  According to this article from Foundation Source over 85% of Millenials give charitably.  In addition, they are tech savvy and probably more likely to give to causes through social media campaigns, such as those that can be offered by Treasured Memories Community Funding, than other generations.

If I still ran my funeral home I would look into how Treasured Memories Community Funding could become a part of it. . .not only to help my client families but my community as well.

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