Jennifer Muldowney is an event planner for memorials in the United States of America and Ireland and is currently partnered with the prestigious Frank E. Campbell - The Funeral Chapel in NYC as their in-house event planner. Jennifer is also notable as author of Say Farewell Your Way, Tedx speaker of ‘Grief as Unique as your Heartbeat’ and host of ‘The Glam Reaper Podcast’. Check out Muldowney Memorials (.com) to learn more.
By Jennifer Muldowney
Viva Las Vegas L
as Vegas - a city of lights, filled with casinos and world-class entertainment, where you can take a spin on the world’s largest observation wheel, ride on a Venetian gondola, watch the iconic Fountains of Bellagio or attend a funeral convention. Once again, funeral professionals filled the halls of the Mandalay Bay at the ICCFA Annual Convention 2022. I enjoyed this convention quite a lot. It is so nice after so much time apart to gather IN PERSON with fellow funeral professionals and debate all the hot topics currently filling our space - natural organic reduction, direct cremation, online funerals and much more. I found the first day Breakout Sessions antiquated and boring and lacking any life. I know we are talking about death but all the more reason to add some sparkle to a presentation. Speaking of sparkles, TV Shark Investor Daymond John was incredible and not least because he kept telling us stories about (my favourite) LL Cool J. His keynote was simple, to the point and punctuated…truly. S.H.A.R.K is his motto (shocking) and this stands for Set your goal, (do your) Homework, (keep the) Amoré, Remember you are the brand and Keep swimming. Check out what these mean on my website www.muldowneymemorials.com For me at this show, there was some big development and innovation in the tech departments. Gather is a new app that combines Live Streaming with CRM. Streamlining Case Management including documents, live streaming, photo inventory and
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memorials is what they offer and from what I saw, the software adds something very valuable to a lot of funeral homes so check out their website https://gather.app to learn more. Next up was a funeral home ATM but not an ordinary ATM. Charity Box Kiosk takes your money instead of giving it to you. It looks and feels exactly like a Bank ATM but this one acts as an online guest book and allows guests to a funeral to donate money to the family or a charity of choice. Of course, nothing in this world is free and 10% of the donations go to the company as payment but they do at least cover the credit card fees and they are transparent about this to the guests who sign up. They also offer to brand or embellish the ATM to suit
