Not Your Grandpa’s Deathcare Community: Death Rocks Club Opens for Funeral Directors
On Oct. 15, Death Rocks Club, a free deathcare development community for licensed funeral directors and interns, opened its doors. Katey Houston, Head of Relationships and Community at Parting Stone, built the club and leads it.
Why it exists
Houston has spent more than 20 years in funeral service, and she has watched the same thing happen again and again.
“Funeral directors give everything to their families, but rarely do people invest in them,” she said. “We are the people at the center of the family experience, and when our growth is not prioritized, we don’t have the tools to make an impact, and stagnation sets in.”
Stagnation, she argues, is at the core of burnout, diminished family experience, lower family satisfaction in funeral homes, and ultimately a slow-to-change profession that lags behind consumer preferences.
“We launched the Death Rocks Club to combat professional stagnation of the family-first funeral directors,” she explains.
The idea came from funeral directors themselves. When Parting Stone surveyed funeral professionals across its network, two answers kept coming up: they want to keep growing professionally, and they want to be recognized for the work they do. Death Rocks Club is built to do both.
The club is open to interns, front-line directors, managers and owners alike. What members share is that they measure their success by the success of their families.
Parting Stone and Houston opened applications to the Death Rocks Club this week and you can apply here.
What Members Get
Impact-forward CE. The courses offered for free to Death Rocks Club members focus on impact-forward topics that provide value for families and shape the culture of the industry. One course titled “The Ash Storage Reckoning” covers supporting families stuck deciding what to do with cremated remains. Another course looks at the real environmental impact of body disposition, and “Death Queerious” focuses on serving queer families.
All CE courses are APSFP certified and free for approved members.
Members teaching members. Founding member Mandy Stafford hosts a live Q&A on natural organic reduction on Nov. 3. On Dec. 4, it’s “Ask Alcor Anything,” a cryonics Q&A.
Weekly participation themes. Every Friday is TGIF: “Thank God I’m a Funeral Director,” when members share something they’re proud of or grateful for that week. There’s also a weekly Deathcare Innovation of the Week, covering apps, grief resources and industry news.
A room full of peers. The Death Rocks Club community app provides a place to ask the questions funeral directors would never ask in front of a family, and get answers from people who do the same work.
Membership is vetted, every application is reviewed by hand, and license numbers are deleted once they’re verified. Keeping the club to licensed funeral directors and interns means members can talk honestly about the job.
Meet them in Charlotte
The club’s first in-person meetup is coffee with Houston at Lottie’s Cafe, around the corner from the Charlotte Convention Center, on Monday, Oct. 26, at 8:30 a.m., during the NFDA International Convention & Expo.
The first 100 members get a free Founding Member pin, handed out at the Parting Stone booth (#2839). Members can check whether they made the cut by looking for the gold Founding Member badge on their profile.
Houston is also collecting members’ questions about products and services on the expo floor, especially the ones they’re skeptical of, and plans to bring the answers back to the club.
Houston and the founding members are inviting anyone interested in joining the community to apply here:
Licensed funeral directors and interns can apply free at community.partingstone.com
