It feels like forever that we have been heads down, mired in the day-to-day tasks of running our business. We are all exhausted. We hear a lot about self-care, but who has the luxury to do that? And what does that mean anyway? Yoga, meditation, sleeping in? You’re probably thinking, “I don’t have time for that. I have a business to run.”
OGR will have three vacancies on its Board of Directors to fill this year. Voting opened in January and the winners will be inducted as part of the Golden Circle Celebration Dinner at the Annual Conference in Indianapolis this May. Below are the three employees of OGR-member funeral homes who have been nominated to fill those vacancies.
What would change if you could see the cremation process through your customer’s eyes? What if you had an unlimited budget and plenty of staff? What would your cremation offerings look like if you had no limits to what you could do? Find out by attending this facilitated problem-solving event based on the IDEO Human Centered Design Thinking approach.
Our membership community helps shape who we are and how we support independently owned funeral homes. To gain insight into how we can continue to improve service to our members, OGR commissioned Whorton Marketing & Research to conduct a survey of members and non-members in 2022. The survey had a 28% response rate with 104 participating out of 368 who were sent an invitation. This is a typical response rate percentage for associations across the board.
OGR is proud to offer numerous, flexible ways to learn, connect and grow in 2023. Plus many of our in-person events and webinars (both live and on-demand) will offer continuing education credits.
OGR Study Groups are one of our most valuable member benefit programs. As COVID travel restrictions eased, two of our groups met in the fall of 2022. The East Coast Study Group met at Hummel Funeral Home in Akron, Ohio, and the West Coast Study Group met at Thomas Miller Mortuary & Crematory in Corona, California.
OGR’s most used member benefit is the Family Contact Survey Program. For years members have relied on the honest feedback they receive from the families they serve through this program. In 2023 this program has been updated to provide better information to you and make it simpler for the families you serve to fill out the survey.
Made in the USA. American-made. Made in China. What does it mean to you? What does it mean to your business? What does it mean to your customers? And how is it impacting buying decisions?
S. Chase Lewis is a 39-year-old funeral director at Lewis Funeral Home and Crematory in Milton, Florida.
Kevin Watts is a funeral director and embalmer at Allen- Beyer Funeral Home in Key Largo, Florida. He shared his experiences with running a successful funeral home that has been around for more than 50 years.
Have you been keeping up with the 12 Months of Marketing campaign that OGR has been emailing to you every month? If not, then you are missing out on ways to get your funeral home’s name out into the public, invite people into your funeral home for events and gain media attention. Best of all, none of these ideas will bust your budget.
• Front page article in the newspaper
• Story on the evening news
• Calls coming into your funeral home months and years after an event
OGR's monthly feature previewing education, events and other opportunities coming up over the next three months.
When you have a restaurant you love, you recommend it to your friends and suggest that they give it a try. When you watch a new show on Netflix that you enjoy, you mention it to others and suggest that they give it a try. When you belong to an association that has benefitted your business and yourself, why not also let others know and suggest that they give it a try?
Hi! I’m Raffy Jose from the Philippines. I was a board member from 2018-2021. I witnessed first hand how important the work of the professional development committee was to our members. As we return to face to face meetings this year we look forward to learning about new and innovative tools to help improve our business after the pandemic. This is the important role of the members of the OGR-PDC.
I am so honored to have been elected to serve as your president this coming year. My family has been a part of OGR for over 50 years. As a young child I remember going on family vacations based on the location of the annual convention. Dad would spend the day in meetings and the rest of the family would explore the area and make great vacation memories out of it. There were many destinations my parents took friends to then stayed for an extra week to vacation.
OGR's monthly feature previewing education, events and other opportunities coming up over the next three months.
OGR's monthly feature previewing education, events and other opportunities coming up over the next three months.
“Thank you for offering such a wonderful resource for people like myself who are grieving to know I am not alone in this journey. I look forward to our next grief support group meeting." - Ann
Think this has nothing to do with your funeral home since you are not a pet funeral provider? Think again. Offering this service can gain your funeral home free publicity, forge partnerships within your community and build a list of grateful humans who see your funeral home as a supportive place to turn to.
