Green Farewells, based in Las Vegas and co-founded by Alexis and Martin McCurdy, is the first black-owned aquamation facility for funeral services. With a mission to harmonize community care and environmental responsibility, the Green Farewells team aims to make eco-friendly cremation options accessible and affordable to all families who lose a loved one. Learn how they’re growing their business by partnering with Gather.

Case Study Overview

• Customer Name: Green Farewells
• Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
• Using Gather Since: 2023
• Uses Gather For: Case Management, Integrated Website Design, KeepTrack™

The Story of Green Farewells

When creating Green Farewells, Alexis and Martin envisioned offering services in a way that better meets families where they’re at today – both younger and older generations. They’ve used their past experience in technology to build the business from the ground up and manage every operational aspect of the business on the backend.

They immediately brought on Lennette Smith to the team, a seasoned veteran in funeral service, to be the managing funeral director of Green Farewells and help guide families through death and grief. Smith, a second-generation funeral director, leads with compassion for helping families through the most difficult moments in life. She is passionate about learning how to serve different cultures and different types of people.

The entire team also recognizes that more change is on the horizon in the world of deathcare, and they welcome it all: new consumer preferences, new technology, new tools, new strategies, and everything in between.

The Challenges Before Gather

The team at Green Farewells faced several different challenges and questions when starting the business that they wanted to tackle head-on.

• New Generations and Consumer Preferences: Alexis, one of the co-founders of Green Farewells, works hard to educate consumers about aquamation and other eco-friendly forms of disposition available today. Plus, as younger generations seek services, Alexis also recognizes the growing challenge of being able to meet people where they’re at in the digital space and create a simpler planning experience for everyone involved, including staff.

• The Need For a Body Tracking System: as case volume grows, it becomes more difficult to track chain of custody for every decedent in a funeral home’s care. Additionally, more families are seeking transparency or updates when it comes to their loved one’s care. Up until finding Gather, the team at Green Farewells struggled to find a system that could streamline care updates to families and reduce the number of phone calls and emails that needed to take place.

• Lack of Digital Family Collaboration: more families prefer to complete arrangements digitally or sign forms digitally nowadays. Green Farewells needed a platform that could simplify family collaboration and provide a clear guide on next steps for both families and staff.

• Inability to Integrate Case Management and Obituaries: the Green Farewells team didn’t have an easy way to publish new obituaries to their website within a few clicks. It required a complex process of copy, paste, and repeat, which didn’t prove to be as efficient as they were envisioning.

How Gather Helped Green Farewells

Since getting started with Gather, the entire team at Green Farewells noted several differentiating benefits for the business:

• Complete Flexibility With Case Management: “With Gather, we are enabled as individuals to have the technology handle manual processes that used to rely on a specific person. Having the integration of technology [like Gather] to facilitate those processes and streamline it for the user [staff] and actual family definitely helps us as being a small business and a small operator.”

• Publishing Obituaries in One Click: “The problem that we could not solve on our own was how to integrate the obituary into my website seamlessly. What I like [about our Gather-built website] is the fact that we could publish the obituary to the website from the case management [platform] itself.”

• More Transparency During Care, Without Extra Work: “I immediately saw the value of of the transparency that we could provide if someone so desired. Being able to meet the husband, the grandpa, and the granddaughter where they’re at, at any given time, I think is powerful. And it’s something special that we provide [through Gather] and something unique as I’ve seen right now that Gather is bringing to the market. So again, to that parallel of these expectations from millennials and Gen Z’ers [to want to know where the team is at in their loved one’s care], Gather has solved that problem for us.”

• More Family Engagement: “The family experience is unmatched. When we look at how we want to represent our brand to a family, we think that Gather does that very well [for us]. Obviously the family is not in the room with us. So how they can in the room with us is through Gather. That’s an experience that makes us a key differentiator. When families get the opportunity to be in the room with us through Gather and KeepTrack, it builds a lot of confidence, but it also keeps us close.”

• Recording Fingerprints With KeepTrack: “I think the workflow piece of how the fingerprints show up has been great. We essentially use the same tablet that we’re using to capture fingerprints and then just upload the file right there from the tablet. That was a win for us operationally.”

• Top-Tier Customer Support: “We have asked Gather to do some higher, sophisticated things and Gather has been able to do them. There hasn’t been anything that we haven’t been able to do. So definitely want to give Gather their flowers.”

Gather Helps Your Firm Connect With New Generations of Families

Is your business truly prepared to handle new generations of families like Green Farewells, or are you still 20 years behind? If you find yourself in the latter group, it may be time to consider a modern, all-in-one case management platform like Gather.

Book a demo with our team and learn how you can leverage Gather to streamline funeral arrangements, give your team better tools, create a better family experience, and take your funeral home to the next level.