Online remembrance candles provide a unique way for visitors to express their sympathies while supporting the Book of Memories in perpetuity.
For more information about your Memorial Candle account, please refer to the Candle Log from your Main > SimplyOne page.
For more information about how to help online visitors light a virtual candle, refer to the Book of Memories Features.
About the Memorial Candle Program
The Book of Memories® program is unlike anything on the market. The highly robust memorial websites are designed to provide interactivity for generations and foster family loyalty to the funeral homes providing it. This is not an online guestbook designed to simply capture condolences for the few days before and following the funeral.
The Book of Memories program is the main reason why funeral homes choose FrontRunner and why countless firms are serving new families who have specifically chosen them for this offering. These firms are the recipients of millions of testimonials and words of appreciation for this high-quality service.
While a number of technology companies charge up to $250 to create an inferior version of a memorial website, true to the nature and philosophy of FrontRunner’s founder, we wanted to provide higher standards to families without cost to them or to the funeral home. To achieve this, FrontRunner created the Memorial Candle Program. It is designed to help financially support and offset the ongoing costs associated with hosting, storing, maintaining and enhancing the memorial websites. The program is completely voluntary to the online visitor; it simply offers them a gesture to show their support to
the family.
We respect that some records have no visitors while others have many. The Memorial Candle Program operates with a community-based approach whereby any funds received are pooled to ensure that records with no candles are all still supported in perpetuity. All we have asked in return is that funeral homes support the program by publishing at least 80% of their services through their websites.
In the initial stages of the program, FrontRunner provided a small percentage back to funeral homes to be used as credits for additional services and ensure a solid online presence. However, we have always reserved the right to adjust this percentage up or down depending on how well the program is supported and whether proceeds are keeping up with expenses.
Today, because of the popularity and functionality of the Book of Memories, a large percentage of these individual memorial websites actually exceed the size of some of our individual funeral home websites. More and more families are publishing years of photos and using the extensive back-end family login features.
Even 100% of the candle proceeds could not support all of the program’s ongoing costs today and unfortunately, many funeral homes have missed the real point and only see this as a profit opportunity.
For those who are looking to increase profits, we kindly ask that you respect the intent of the Memorial Candle Program to support the Book of Memories Program. Further, consider adding a $40-$60 charge to your own GPL for “Digital Media Services”. Many clients could generate significant profits with this approach by helping families understand the value of their time to create the memorial website and online obituary posting.
While many funeral firms are only searching for the cheapest websites, all of us at FrontRunner sleep well knowing our clients’ families and communities are being well served through our clients’ care, compassion and desire to truly provide a higher standard.
Need more help with this?
Don’t hesitate to contact us here.