Directors Investment Group Earns Great Place to Work Certification™ for Fourth Consecutive Year

ABILENE, TX — Directors Investment Group (DIG), parent company to Funeral Directors Life, Passare,
Claimcheck, and other subsidiaries, has spent the better part of four decades building a unique culture.
After undergoing a rigorous and extensive certification process, DIG is proud to announce that it has
been recertified as a “Great Place To Work” through May 2026!

“To be recognized as a great workplace for the fourth consecutive year is an honor and a testament to
the culture we’ve intentionally built over the years,” said Kris Seale, DIG President & CEO. “This
achievement isn’t just about having amazing programs or benefits; it’s about our people. We extend our
gratitude to Great Place To Work® for this recognition!”

This prestigious recognition is based on a comprehensive write-up and current employees’ experience
working at DIG. To acquire recertification, DIG’s employees completed an anonymous survey ranking the
company’s culture, leadership, benefits, and other factors. The survey feedback and Great Place To
Work’s extensive data-driven methodology revealed that 96% of employees said DIG is a great place to
work, compared to 57% at an average U.S.-based company.

For the past eight years, DIG has also been named on Fortune’s Best Workplaces in Texas™ list.
Additionally, DIG has received recognition on Fortune’s Best Medium Workplaces™ list and its Best
Workplaces in Financial Services & Insurance™ list.

“Our team shows up every day with purpose, passion, and a commitment to serve our clients,
community, and each other,” Seale continued. “To quote Nehemiah 6:3, we believe that ‘we’re doing a
great work, and we cannot come down.’ That shared mission is what makes DIG truly special.”
To learn more about DIG, visit dig.family or view our Great Place To Work® profile.

About DIG

At Directors Investment Group (parent company to Funeral Directors Life, Passare, Claimcheck, and
other subsidiaries), our mission is to be known as “the best, most-respected provider of service to our
industries.” We serve funeral homes nationwide, offering various services to clients, including sales
programs, training, technology, marketing, and financial services. To apply online, visit us at dig.family.

About Great Place To Work®

As the global authority on workplace culture, Great Place To Work brings 30 years of groundbreaking
research and data to help every place become a great place to work for all. Their proprietary platform
and For All™ Model help companies evaluate the experience of every employee, with exemplary
workplaces becoming Great Place To Work Certified or receiving recognition on a coveted Best
Workplaces™ List.

Everstory Partners Earns 2025 Great Place To Work Certification™

(May 22, 2025) – Altamonte Springs, FL – Everstory Partners is proud to be Certified™ by Great Place To Work® for 2025. The prestigious award is based entirely on what current employees say about their experience working at Everstory and its family of brands.

Great Place To Work® is the global authority on workplace culture, employee experience, and the leadership behaviors proven to deliver market-leading revenue, employee retention and increased innovation.

“Over the past 24 months, we have been investing in our team — listening, learning, and evolving together,” said Everstory Chief Executive Officer Lilly Donohue. “I am incredibly proud to lead this company and to work alongside such dedicated and passionate individuals.”

A few of the initiatives Everstory has implemented during this time:

• Increased the company-wide minimum wage.
• Launched Everstory University to enhance professional development.
• Implemented user-friendly technology platforms streamlining workflows.
• Launched advisory councils where our general managers, sales managers and funeral home managers provide insights and advice, ensuring the company makes informed decisions for its business and its people.
• Held town halls and implemented direct access to its executives for transparent communication.

“Every step has been focused on creating a better workplace,” Donohue added. “These efforts exemplify our dedication to an open, collaborative culture because we believe by fostering a supportive and engaging environment, we can truly be the best in family service.”

To be certified, the company earned the real-time feedback of employees regarding their company culture with approximately 80 percent of Everstory’s 2,600 employees returning surveys sharing their thoughts on working at the company.

“Great Place To Work Certification is a highly coveted achievement that requires consistent and intentional dedication to the overall employee experience,” says Sarah Lewis-Kulin, vice president of global recognition at Great Place To Work. “By successfully earning this recognition, it is evident that Everstory Partners stands out as one of the top companies to work for, providing a great workplace environment for its employees.”

Everstory Chief People Officer Karen Sheean added: “Employee engagement is a key component of a multi-year commitment to listening to and understanding the voices of our employees through this program. We are thrilled to become Great Place To Work-Certified™ in our first year, however, we recognize that the real work is just beginning.”

“We owe our continued success to our team of dedicated employees at all of our Everstory locations and Support Center. We celebrate and thank them for all they do in earning this incredible recognition,” Sheean said.

Explore a Career at Everstory Partners

Looking to grow your career at a company that puts its people first? Visit our careers page at: www.everstorypartners.com/careers

About Everstory Partners

Everstory Partners’ mission is to create supportive spaces where individuals and families can find solace, meaning, and hope in the midst of loss. Since 1999, the company has grown to include 463 cemetery, funeral, and crematory locations serving more than 65,000 families a year across the United States (including Puerto Rico) on both a pre-need and at-need basis. Everstory is the brand promise, created in April 2023, to destigmatize death care with a unique blend of long-standing traditions of caring for the deceased with a fresh perspective that death is a natural and beautiful part of the human experience that should be planned and celebrated.

About Great Place to Work Certification™

Great Place To Work® Certification™ is the most definitive “employer-of-choice” recognition that companies aspire to achieve. It is the only recognition based entirely on what employees report about their workplace experience – specifically, how consistently they experience a high-trust workplace. Great Place to Work Certification is recognized worldwide by employees and employers alike and is the global benchmark for identifying and recognizing outstanding employee experience. Every year, more than 10,000 companies across 60 countries apply to get Great Place To Work-Certified.

About Great Place To Work®

As the global authority on workplace culture, Great Place To Work® brings 30 years of groundbreaking research and data to help every place become a great place to work for all. Their proprietary platform and For All™ Model helps companies evaluate the experience of every employee, with exemplary workplaces becoming Great Place To Work Certified™ or receiving recognition on a coveted Best Workplaces™ List.

I was always told that you have to “Learn before you Earn” and now I’m told, and I believe, that “Learning is a lifetime endeavor” —  meaning that you never stop learning.

So, if you believe like me, you can take a look at the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) and WilbertEDU calendars and notice some very good opportunities for learning coming up.  There are four webinars coming up in May that I do not want to miss  — 2 sponsored by NFDA and 2 sponsored by our friends at Wilbert through their WilbertEDU service to funeral directors.

As you are probably aware of, Wilbert offers a free CEU service to the funeral profession through their WilbertEDU series.  You can get a plethora of CEU credits by taking part in their every other week CEU funeral profession webinars.  They have already presented one seminar in May but have two more on the schedule.

You may find the two yet to be presented May webinars excellent for business knowledge in the areas of customer acquisition and consumer attitudes about memorialization.  The two May seminars scheduled are:

May 15 — “A snapshot into your consumer:  Attitudes and Behaviors that define your future business model” .

May 29 — “The case for proactive preneed:  Attract new families, grow call volume, and build lasting value”.  

To learn more about each webinar and to register for either of these WilbertEDU webinars click here.

One webinar from NFDA will be on legal issues affecting funeral service and presented by NFDA’s General Counsel Chris Farmer.  That webinar will be held on Wednesday, May 21, and is free to all NFDA members with a slight charge for non-members.  It does carry with it one CEU credit through most state associations.

To learn more and/or sign up for the seminar titled “Top legal issues for funeral homes in 2025” click here.

A second webinar from NFDA that I saw coming up is also very timeley.  It appears that the advent of increased activity in the acquisition market is now here and whether you are interested in buying or selling this one hour seminar titled “Is it time to Buy or Sell:  How to Determine your Succession Plan” should give you some pointers.

This webinar is presented by Johnson Consulting Group CEO Jake Johnson and while no CEU credits are offered it is free of charge and of timely substance for the profession and probably your own situation.

The webinar is scheduled to be presented on Wednesday, May 14, and you can register and/or learn more by clicking here.

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”

If you read Funeral Director Daily and listen to me when I have a chance to be a guest on an industry podcast you know that I believe that there is a great, and growing, potential market in what I call the “Cremation Aftermarket”.  My take on the the “Cremation Aftermarket” is that many people who become the guardians of cremated remains don’t know what to do with those remains.

Because of that those remains end up in closets or on shelves in homes and as time passes the guardians of such remains question what they are going to do with them, but never get around to doing anything.

It’s because of that that I think a great opportunity that is available to funeral homes is to let these guardians know — during preneed, at need, and even well into post-need — that there are options to memorialize those remains and take the responsibility of being the guardian off of their shoulders.  It’s especially important when you realize that a funeral home can not only help a guardian make a decision but the funeral home may also profit off the sale of many of these cremation aftermarket products and memorials.

As a matter of fact, on this episode of Podcasket, I bring up the “Cremation Aftermarket” and the host, Tukios CEO Curtis Funk makes the comment about a built-in market for such when he comments, “. . you can market to (these guardians) and they want you to market to them. . . . .Reach-out again. . . (think of it as) Life-cycle marketing”.

Podcasket Episode #6:  Cremation Aftermarket discussion begins at the 39:06 mark and lasts for about six minutes.

With that comment CEO Funk is acknowledging the great amount of people who have cremated remains within their guardianship and probably are wondering how to relieve themselves of that responsibility of guardianship in a tasteful fashion.

Late last week I learned of a great promotion to do just that.  My friend Kelly Roberts, founder of funeral service alternative Sendoff, sent me an email about his upcoming “Ashes among the Oaks” event.

You can learn about the event here, but what it is is an opportunity to learn, in a gentle way, how to “let go” of those remains.  Roberts and the Minneapolis metropolitan-area based Sendoff have teamed with Better Place Forests of the St. Croix Valley for an afternoon in the local Better Place Forest.

My guess is that Roberts, Sendoff, and Better Place Forests hope to make some sales for Better Place Forests with this event, but reaching-out and giving these guardians an opportunity to realize that some type of memorialization can be probably should be done for the cremations remains that they brought home yesterday or decades ago is great public relations on its own.

Sendoff, which sub-titles itself “Funerals Reimagined” is, in my opinion on the right track to capture tomorrow’s Death Care consumer.  In a world where that consumer will make choices about Disposition, Celebration, and Memorialization, a company offering what Sendoff does, especially in the Celebration and Memorialization modes, may capture much of the business from consumers that traditional funeral homes no longer appeal to.

Take a look at this page from the Sendoff employee profiles and read the bios to get an idea of some of the celebrations that many might prefer for themselves.

Here is the website for Sendoff.

Related — “Lost in a sea of ash – When wildfire destroys a home – and a loved one’s urn – the search begins.  Los Angeles Times (CA)

Here is a short video from KARE TV – Channel 11 NBC Minneapolis about “Sendoff – Funerals Reimagined”

More news from the world of Death Care:

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”

“Rest in Pizza”: Remembering The Great Michigan Pizza Funeral

The 1970s will be remembered as the decade that brought us polyester leisure suits, pet rocks, and shag carpeting — and perhaps one of the most unusual funerals in American history. This funeral, held in 1973, attracted the governor of Michigan, required an 18-foot-deep grave, and cost $39,000 at a time when the average funeral would run about $1,000. The craziest part though? This expensive funeral was for 29,000 cheese-and-mushroom pizzas.

Poison pizzas

The Great Michigan Pizza Funeral was the brainchild of Mario Fabbrini, the president of Fabbrini Family Foods of Ossineke, Michigan. Since immigrating to the United States from fascist Croatia, Fabbrini had gone from selling frozen pizzas from his home kitchen to running a factory that employed 22 people and produced 45,000 pizzas for about 1,000 Michigan outlets every week. 

It was in the midst of shipping some of those pizzas in February 1973 that Fabbrini received an alarming call from one of his suppliers that stopped his delivery trucks in their tracks. The supplier shared that an inspector had found botulism toxin — a potentially lethal bacteria — in some of the cans of mushrooms they’d sent to Fabbrini. He had no choice but to recall and dispose of the pizzas containing those mushrooms — about 44,000 of them, at first count.

Pretty cheesy

What does one do with 44,000 poisonous frozen pizzas? For Fabbrini, the answer was to bury them, complete with a high-profile funeral that would serve as part protest, part promotional stunt.

On March 5, 1973, dozens of folks came from far and wide to participate in the graveside service. As a bulldozer shoved what turned out to be about 29,000 cellophane-wrapped pizzas valued at $39,000 into the 18-foot-deep hole, Michigan governor William G. Milliken gave a “brief homily ‘on courage in the face of tragedy,’” according to Atlas Obscura. Afterward, Fabbrini laid a “two-colored flower garland on the grave: red gladioli for sauce, white carnations for cheese.”

Blame the mice

Sadly, the entire incident was all for naught; as one newspaper punnily called it, the recall that started the whole thing was a “grave error.” 

While it was true that two mice died after eating test samples of the pizzas containing the supposedly-tainted mushrooms, the federal government later determined that they didn’t actually die from botulism. It was all a false alarm.

“I think it was indigestion,” Fabbrini told a reporter. “Maybe they didn’t like my pizza.”

(They actually died of peritonitis.)

Fabbrini later sued the mushroom supplier and the canning company for $1 million, the case was settled in 1979 in the Michigan Court of Appeals for about $211,000. Fabbrini’s company went out of business in the 1980s.

Friday was March 15 or the “Ides of March”.  And, it appears that Friday, March 15, 2024, was a better day for funeral service than Friday, March 15, 44 BC was for Julius Caesar.

Funeral service has been hit with a lot of bad publicity lately about certain funeral providers not always doing the ethically correct application and we’ve had tough business situations brought about by inflation and higher than normal interest rates of late.  In spite of not always getting good news on differing subjects, most funeral directors continue to give great service to families that call them.  However, last Friday a couple of things happened that can only be thought of as “good news” for the profession and should allow us, at least for some time, to put a little bounce back in our steps.

First of all, on Friday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), issued a draft of their study of formaldehyde in the workplace and they concluded, in part that formaldehyde can still be used in death care, according to a release by the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA):

“(On Friday) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its draft of its determination of the health and environmental risks of formaldehyde under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for comment and peer review. NFDA and funeral service secured a major victory when the draft risk assessment indicated that formaldehyde used for embalming would not be subject to regulations under TSCA.”

And secondly, funeral service learned that a bill was introduced into the United States Congress that asks that consumers with Health Savings Accounts (HSA) be authorized to pay funeral expenses from these accounts.  Here’s a quote from the author of the bill, Oklahoma Representative Kevin Hern that appeared in this press release from NFDA on Friday:

“The death of a loved one is already a solemn and stressful time; there is no reason why overly burdensome red tape should get in the way of those facing a tough loss. When hard-working Americans choose to open and contribute to tax-benefitted HSA accounts, they do it so they can choose the best health services for them – both when opening an account and in the future. Death often comes at the end of a battle with one’s health, and we shouldn’t punish their loved ones by excluding funeral expenses from being used from someone’s leftover HSA funds.”

Funeral Director Daily take:

Formaldehyde Information — At the NFDA National Convention in Las Vegas last Fall I visited with several representatives of mortuary chemical companies and the idea of formaldehyde being banned concerned them.  So, this is very good news moving forward.

Yes, less of the deceased population is embalmed in this era of ever-increasing cremation dispositions.  But, even looking forward, it is expected that about 20% of United States deaths will be embalmed and buried.  With a number of 3 million deaths nationwide annually that is still a ballpark figure of 600,000 embalmed bodies annually.  That is still a considerable number that the chemical companies will be able to provide embalming fluids for.

Funeral Expenses from Health Savings Accounts —  This is a smart and practical solution that should be added to the qualified expenses from Health Savings Accounts (HSA).  However, it is just being introduced and there may be obstacles in getting the bill passed.  No one, at least of late, has ever accused Congress of being “smart and practical” so maybe there is a longer road than we might expect for this issue to come to reality.

In theory, for those that take advantage of this opportunity the law would, in essence, have their funeral or other death care expenses be tax deductible because when you contribute to your HSA account you get a tax deduction in the year that you do so.  So, even though you may pay your funeral bill years later, it is with money that has been put into the HSA and the year that you did so, you received a tax deduction for doing so.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

As I look back, it is difficult for me to find areas where Congress has allowed consumers to have “tax deductible” payments for consumer goods or services that were not health care or education related.  Doing this for funeral expenses seems to me that Congress is deeming funeral expenses as “Health Care”.

I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing, but it also seems to me that people, especially those that are not friends of fuenral service, have tried to keep funeral expenses out of “Health Care” nomenclature for decades.  It will be interesting to see the discussions and how this moves through Congress.

My wife and I have had HSA’s for years and love them.  We contributed the maximum amounts for years and have built up fairly large, for an HSA, values.  It’s especially great to have them now and to pay out-of-pocket health care costs out of the accounts, because it seems like it is not coming out of our general spending.

It’s also interesting to note on what might happen with Preneed payments.  Will the proposed legislation let an HSA account holder set-up a Preneed account using existing HSA funds?  That would seem to be using “tax-deductible” dollars for what would be a future consumer purchase.  It will be interesting to see the comments on that type of thought or use by the members of Congress.

Finally, HSA account values are set up to diminish over time as evidenced that once you are a Medicare recipient at approximately age 65 I’m under the impression that you can no longer contribute to HSA accounts — just spend what is in them.  The average age of death in the United States is slightly over 77 years of age at present.  If HSA’s are going to be counted on to pay for funeral expenses at the time of death I can see a need to lift this post-Medicare contribution ban.

Thank NFDA — In any regard, these two items are two “Good News” items for the Death Care profession.  There may be many people to thank for their advocacy in moving these items forward, but probably no person or organization deserves any more credit for this than the folks and Board Members at the National Funeral Directors Association!

NFDA has also announced that they will be conducting a webinar on March 27 to inform us more about the formaldehyde standard and its implications.  You can learn more about and register for that event here.

More news from the world of Death Care:

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“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”

Just watched The Burial, a new movie streaming on Amazon Prime about the multi billion-dollar “death industry” that is both disturbing and “boisterously entertaining,” thanks to two great Oscar-winning actors, Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx.

It’s about a handshake contract deal gone bad between Jeremiah O’Keefe (Jones), a Mississippi funeral-home proprietor with eight locations, and Ray Loewen, who headed a multinational funeral-home empire based in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver, Canada.

O’Keefe is in financial trouble when he decides to sell off his funeral homes to Loewen.The handshake deal takes place on Loewen’s yacht (filming took place circling Vancouver’s scenic inner harbour off English Bay).

Months go by and the deal doesn’t go through. O’Keefe believed the Loewen Group was stalling until O’Keefe went bankrupt so they could buy up O’Keefe’s funeral homes and his profitable funeral insurance business at bargain basement prices.

O’Keefe hires a young Black lawyer to sue Loewen for breach of contract. The young lawyer, Hal (played by Mamoudou Athie) convinces O’Keefe he needs to hire a super successful rich Black lawyer named Willie E. Gary (played by Jamie Foxx) to win the case.

At the time, Gary had never lost a case and had won 90 multi million-dollar lawsuits. The son of a sharecropper, Gary had a private jet named Wings of Justice and wore $5,000 suits. He was one of the richest lawyers in the U.S. Foxx plays him as Johnnie Cochran. Gary was a personal injury lawyer who had never taken on a contract law case. One of Gary’s partners described O’Keefe’s case as “a nap waiting to happen.”

At one point, Loewen had offered O’Keefe $100 million to settle the lawsuit. O’Keefe, believing his lawyer’s advice, decided to proceed to trial.

During the litigation research, O’Keefe learns that the Loewen Group has made an exclusive deal with local Black Baptist churches to sell funeral insurance to parishioners, which Loewen estimated would bring in millions of dollars but would violate the original Loewen contract with O’Keefe.

The Burial also focuses on the bond created between the morose O’Keefe and the flamboyant Gary, with the film’s finale being a courtroom drama that ends with the testimony of Loewen himself.

Gary’s final line of questioning was about Loewen’ about Loewen’s yacht – the one where O’Keefe had reached a deal with Loewen in Vancouver’s harbour. The final question led to Loewen’s undoing on the witness stand, according to the film.

At the conclusion of the civil trial, a mostly black jury awarded O’Keefe $500 million for breach of contract, including $400 million in punitive damages; the amount was later reduced to $175 million.

The massive judgment led to the fall of the Loewen Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 1999. By 2002, it was restructured as the Alderwoods Group. Four years later, Alderwoods sold to Service Corporation International (SCI), the $4-billion-a-year American funeral giant based in Houston, Texas. SCI operates local funeral homes under its brand Dignity Memorial.

Ray Loewen had moved to Vancouver in 1969 from Manitoba, where his family ran a small funeral home. In 1975, Loewen successfully ran for the Social Credit party in the B.C. provincial election, but he never made it into cabinet and left politics after three years. He represented Burnaby-Edmonds until 1979.

After his short political stint, Loewen founded the Loewen Group in 1985 and started buying up funeral homes. By 1986, it operated 45 funeral homes across Canada. At it peak in the 1990s – at the time of O’Keefe’s lawsuit – the company had 15,000 employees and operated more than 1,100 funeral homes and 500 cemeteries in Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom. It was the second-largest funeral home operator in North America.

After losing the Mississippi trial, Loewen took his company on more expansion, but it didn’t pay off and he was forced out of his own company, according to an article by John Mackie of The Vancouver Sun.

“Loewen vanished from the public eye after he resigned from the company in 1998,” Mackie wrote. “The last time he was in the news was in 2008, when he put his palatial 14,611-square-foot mansion in Burnaby up for sale for $25 million. It wound up selling for $9.948 million in 2012.

“Loewen’s family went into the funeral business in the 1930s in his native Steinbach, Manitoba,” noted Mackie, who is originally from Winnipeg. “Ray Loewen could be a tough businessman. According to a 1996 New York Times story, he liked to tell investors that his first management decision was to fire his brothers from their parents’ small Mennonite funeral home in Manitoba.”

Mackie described The Burial as “a David and Goliath story, with Loewen as Goliath.”

The movie was based on a 1999 New Yorker article by Jonathan Harr and was directed by Maggie Betts from a script she co-wrote with Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright.

David Erlich of IndieWire called the movie a “rousing crowdpleaser, which absolutely slayed the 2,000-person audience at its TIFF premiere” in his review.

Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones deliver bravura performances, says this New York Times review. which called it a “next wave” film.

The film spent one week in movie theaters before airing on the Prime Video streaming platform on October 13, 2023.