Executive Director’s Report

By Darlyne Erickson. CAE

2020…really?!

I don’t know about you, but I certainly recall 20 years ago when we thought the sky was about to fall in the year 2000! How in the world did 20 years fly by so quickly?! I will say that 2019 was a good year for MFDA and it is because of members like you that we have excelled. Thank you! Looking forward it appears that we will have a lot on our plate legislatively. I will defer to our Lobbyist Joe Sellwood and his article on page 7. We will be asking a lot of questions of our members in the months ahead, as we need your input on what 149A might look like in the next few years. Stay tuned, but start thinking now! I prefer to look ahead as opposed to reminiscing, but the following excerpt is fun to read and reflect. A funeral director sent me an MFDA “newsletter” from 1935. We had copies available at the fall district meetings and I thought it would be interesting to include a small portion on the tangible and intangible benefits of being part of an association (shown at right). These benefits hold true today! From the July 23, 1935 MFDA Newsletter: LET’S LOOK AT THE RECORD! The only justification for a trade association is found in the answer to the question: “Does It Pay?” If it isn’t able to do for the industry what individual members could do for themselves, then it is not justified. If it does what should be done better than individuals could do profitably for themselves, then the answer to the question is YES. As far as the individual is concerned or the entire group in some instances, a trade association’s program of necessity has to do partly with intangibles. The benefits of these intangibles are hard to appraise. For instance, how can George Bergreen, Sauk Centre, know what it was worth to him to have the state association put burial insurance companies out of funeral business. They never competed with him, maybe they never would, but if they had been permitted to spread and “caught” at Sauk Centre they might have cost Mr. Berggren a hundred times as much each year as he pays into the state association. There are tangible as well as intangible activities in a trade association. One of the tangible activities in our trade association is the re-rating of funeral establishments, brought about wholly thru the association’s efforts, and which will save Minnesota funeral directors thousands of dollars every year when the work is completed. About 100 re-ratings were announced as of April 1st. Since then, the work has been progressing slowly and will be completed this year. As Al Smith says, “Let’s look at the record” Alfred Emanuel Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American politician who served four terms as Governor of New York and was the Democratic Party’s candidate for President in 1928. He was the urban leader of the Efficiency Movement. 2019 Minnesota Funeral Directors Association Membership Directory

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