This past Wednesday was the third anniversary of my father’s death. I wrote his obituary, and I included the almost obligatory, “in lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Boy Scouts of America”, which then asks for a check. It occurs to me now that this is a terribly inefficient and outdated way of accepting funds to honor the deceased. Why are we taking checks in the mail, when an online memorial page would accomplish so much more?
My Suggestion – A Memorial Page on your website
If someone has thought enough of your organization that they would ask for money to help you achieve your mission, don’t you owe them a little more than sending a card and accepting checks in the mail?
Here’s my suggestion, and take it for what it’s worth. With the family’s permission, create a memorial page on your website. You could include the URL in the obituary in lieu of an address to send the check to. It would serve the function of collecting donations instantly that you could set up to deposit directly into the memorial account for whatever the chosen purpose might be, but more importantly, it would be a way that your organization could say thank you and pay tribute to the contribution the deceased made to changing lives during their lifetime.
I think you’d want to include pictures of the deceased. You’d want stories. Maybe include the obituary. I think a section for people to leave comments would also be appropriate. You’d want the memorial page to tell the story of who the person was, and why they matter to your organization. I think a quotes section would be fantastic.
Helping to Heal
It always rankled me that I couldn’t do more to help remember a great volunteer. When you work with volunteers for long enough, you get close. I’ve lost enough volunteers, and each time, you wish you could do more. I’ve been to a lot of wakes, and shaken a lot of hands, and thanked a lot of grieving people for the services their relatives rendered to the Boy Scouts of America. Each time I felt that my words didn’t say enough. I wished I could have said, or done, more.
When my dad died, I poured myself into a couple of projects to keep myself busy. I got into genealogy, and traced our family’s roots back to the 1500s. But more helpful than that, I scanned every picture of my dad that we had in the house. I created an album on Facebook, and I published a book of the pictures through Shutterfly. There were a lot of people who came to the wake who I didn’t know, but that knew my dad. Them sharing stories of how he’d made them laugh was really helpful.
My dad loved the Boy Scouts, and since I was working for the Boy Scouts, we set up a memorial fund for him. It seemed fitting. But looking back on it now, I think a memorial page would have been nice. It would have been nice to have something public where people could get together online and celebrate his life.
So consider this the next time you lose a valued volunteer as a way of saying thank you, and letting that volunteer’s memory continue the good they did while they were alive.
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