Funeral Consumers Alliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting a consumer's right to choose a meaningful, dignified, affordable funeral. Think of us as if we were the "Consumer Reports" of the funeral business.
Here's how we can help you:
- Objective funeral advice, including online pamphlets and articles on your legal rights and options as a funeral consumer
- Newsletters rounding up national issues affecting funeral choices and costs, scams to avoid, and creative ways to remember the dead without going into debt.
- Monitoring funeral industry trends and practices nationally and exposing abuses.
- Serving as a consumer advocate for legal and regulatory reform, giving advice on or lobbying for necessary changes locally, state-wide, or nationally
- Serving as a credible source of information for media covering death and dying
- Referring you to your local nonprofit funeral and memorial and planning society
Our affiliates are nonsectarian, nonprofit, educational organizations. They were first started in the late 1930s (known then as Memorial Societies) because of two influences: the depression and the increasing cost of funerals due to the use of embalming and more elaborate manufactured caskets. There are 100 nonprofit funeral-planning groups—in most states of the U.S. that belong to FCA.
Many affiliates, with the help of their volunteers, do a price survey of area mortuaries. Some have been able to negotiate a discount at participating funeral homes, sort of like a cooperative buyers' club. (Members rarely spend more than $1,000 for a simple cremation or $2,000 for a funeral). In addition, your membership supports the social action needed to expand and protect a consumer's last rights.
There are two ways to join FCA:
- Through one of our local affiliates — Our local chapters have the best information on funeral prices and practices in their communities. Some of our chapters have found funeral homes and crematories willing to give members substantial discounts. Even if your local FCA chapter hasn't negotiated discounts with such businesses, every chapter offers funeral planning forms, objective advice, and literature that will help you stretch your funeral dollars. To find out about local benefits of membership or to join a local group, contact them through our online directory.
- The Friends of FCA membership is for those who want to support our national organization directly and receive the materials and publications we offer below, or for those not near a local FCA group. If you wish in the future, you may transfer your Friends membership anywhere in the U.S., under the terms of reciprocity which govern our affiliates. If you joined as a Friend because there's no local chapter, we can transfer your membership when one is started (maybe you'll be that special volunteer that starts one!).
