Sara Williams Fights for Affordable Funeral Options

Spend a little time with Sara Williams and you’ll detect an upbeat, even playful spirit, which at first might make her deep, lifelong interest in death a bit of a head-scratcher. She’s president of the nonprofit Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA), a trained home funeral guide and hospice volunteer — and runs a Death Cafe near where she lives in North Carolina. She knows a lot about death and funerals and is all about helping people learn and act on what she knows.

FCA, which Williams describes as “pro-consumer,” helps people make decisions and save money, as well as detailing veterans’ funeral and burial benefits and more.

Probably nothing reveals her personality better than the statement she made on her Shrouding Sisters website: “I am also a duly ordained minister of American Marriage Ministries. This is why I LOVE to tell people ‘I can marry you AND bury you!’’”

SevenPonds interviewed her recently in advance of the 2025 FCA Biennial Conference June 26-29 in North Carolina, to find out about how FCA is working to help people avoid unnecessary expense and aggravation when planning a funeral.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the Funeral Consumers Alliance?

It’s a national network of affiliates, a nonprofit organization of volunteers that’s designed to help and protect consumers when they are shopping for funeral goods or services. The national FCA is the umbrella under which these affiliates operate in cities around the country. Some chapters are just one or two individuals — in many cases, dedicated volunteers who were helped by FCA and chose to create that city’s FCA affiliate.

We grew out of the memorial societies that began in 1963.

If I am planning a funeral, what can FCA do for me?

First and foremost, we provide hands-on help to consumers who are in the midst of shopping for funeral goods or services. We have family members who reach out to us when they need to understand what their rights are or are having a bad experience.

There is a Federal Trade Commission law, the Funeral Rule, that protects them in many ways and we can immediately educate them as to these rights. Most people do not know that this law includes a list of line items aimed to protect them.

For example: Funeral providers must quote prices over the phone. They also must break down the costs and immediately hand anyone who walks into a funeral provider’s establishment a list of these costs — a General Price List (commonly called GPL).

If a law is broken, the FCA volunteers will get involved with the funeral provider. In the past we have encountered extreme cases where FCA has advocated for the consumer by finding a lawyer to take on a case against the funeral provider. As you can imagine, we receive calls regarding all kinds of situations. This has involved everything from a consumer being cajoled into buying a “package” or extra bundled goods they do not need, or a funeral home trying to renege on a signed contract.

We are there to help the consumer in any way we can.

This sounds like a great benefit to consumers. I had no idea there was such a law.

Yes! In fact, the FTC reached out to FCA several years ago when they decided it was time to update the law from 1984. We dug into our experiences and sent out an email blast to our volunteers and members requesting any recommendations for better consumer protection. We offered this feedback to the FTC at a public workshop held in Washington, D.C., in September 2023. The current administration has stifled all further legislative updates so the Funeral Rule will no doubt never be updated for funeral home price transparency. Very sad. 

Can anyone be a member of FCA?

Yes, each affiliate will be different, but most offer a one-time, lifetime fee ranging in general from $25 to $100. The cost varies based on the costs in the city it serves.

Volunteers are drawn to us based on their personal interests or experiences — good or bad— which they have had when handling the funeral of their own family members. Our volunteers are very passionate about their advocacy work because the planning process surrounding death is so emotional that we all want people to have the best possible experience. 

We  just created a program where anyone interested in funeral consumer advocacy can start their own affiliate. We call it PALs (Prospective Affiliate Leaders) and the interest has really taken off! We will be starting affiliates in six new locations!

On your website, you lay out a comprehensive strategy for how to shop for a funeral. What are the most important things to keep in mind?

No. 1, you probably wish, like shopping for a dishwasher, that the prices are out there, that you can do the comparison shopping from your computer screen. Nope! You’ll probably need to go visit two or three funeral homes. Remember that the first thing they’re required to do is give you a General Price List (GPL). So make sure you get that, and that you have time to study it. 

And just pick up the vibe. Are they friendly to you? Do they answer your questions? If you go to two or three, one is for sure going to probably feel, you know, warmer and like you could go away thinking, I’m not one to have a home funeral, and if I’m going to use a funeral home, I’ll pick that one. There’s going to be a clear difference.

And by the way, everybody assumes we hate funeral directors, we hate funeral homes, but we don’t. We’re not anti-funeral home. We’re just very pro-consumer. And when people don’t know their rights, they can be taken advantage of, like any consumer. 

In your online profile, you state that you were told in high school that you were “obsessed with death.” That observation by a classmate was not entirely off base. You started questioning how we handle death back in middle school, following the death of your friend. Tell us about that. 

I had a classmate, Louis, who died from muscular dystrophy. I can still see him and all the guys pushing him in his wheelchair on the playground. They made Louis the general when they played army. When Louis died, they paraded all of us around the open casket at the funeral home. And I remember looking in and thinking, that’s not Louis. And that image stuck with me. And in the back of my mind, I knew we could do death better. And I learned that’s absolutely true.

How did you get involved with the Funeral Consumers Alliance?

I was introduced to the National Home Funeral Alliance in 2013. They had their national conference in Raleigh (North Carolina), and the next thing I knew I was on their board. And then I found out about my local Funeral Consumers Alliance, got involved here in North Carolina, and just stayed involved!

The goal of FCA is to make people aware of their rights as consumers when making funeral plans so, as your website says, they can choose simple, affordable after-death arrangements. One of those rights is to bypass the funeral home altogether and have a funeral at home. How did we get to the point where we outsourced this very personal and — as you’ve said — “beautiful” experience to a business entity?

It used to be not so long ago, somebody died, they were laid out on the dining room table, and one of the neighbors built a pine box. You borrowed a cart from your neighbor and took Aunt Bessie after the wake to the lower 40 or the church graveyard.

What upended all that was the Civil War. Union soldiers were dying by the thousands and the railroads would not accept their bodies. So field embalmers get the notion to make this solution — creosote, arsenic, mercuric chloride, alcohol — and they just followed the action to all the battlefields, embalming in tents and barns and sheds. And it worked.

Then Lincoln is assassinated, and Mary Lincoln knows he has to get from D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, on a train, and it’s going to take almost three weeks. And she says, he’s got to be embalmed. So Honest Abe was probably embalmed three times, at least twice.

And before you know it, the rich figure, if it’s good enough for Lincoln, it’s good enough for Dad! So they want this embalming. And eventually nobody wants to do it at home anymore — that’ll mean we’re poor if we do it ourselves. So let’s just let the professionals do it. And now you have a billion-dollar industry.

Your website features a section called Making Decisions. And you have a maxim: Plan, Write, Tell — something you say everyone should do long before they take their last breath, not only to ensure that their final wishes are honored, but also to spare their family a last-minute panic to plan their funeral and final disposition. Can you explain?

So you need a plan. Think about your final wishes. What do you want to happen to your body when you die? And don’t say, “I don’t care. Take it out with the trash.” Don’t be ridiculous! Somebody cares about you. We’re going to want to remember you, and we can’t put you in the trash. So, you know, grow up and think about your final wishes, and then write it down.

There’s several documents every person over 18 needs: a will, a power of attorney, a health care power of attorney and an advanced directive. If something were to happen to you, who’s going to speak for you if you can’t speak for yourself? And the document I love is Five Wishes. It’s really simple. It has a heart, you know, I like it.

And then tell. Tell people till they are sick and tired of listening to you talk about it. So people remember: “We know what Sara wants. She’s had her shroud in her closet for 10 years, and she wants to have a green burial. We know, we know, we know!” 

What are the most common misconceptions that folks have about their rights?

That they have to use a funeral home, that they have no rights at all. They think, “I can’t just buy what I want or need. They want to sell me a bundle, so I guess I have to buy all of that stuff that they show me, like the casket or a fancy memory book or cremation jewelry.”

No! You can buy a casket from Walmart or Costco or make it yourself, and they have to accept it and they can’t charge you a handling fee. It’s amazing.

As a final note, give us a brief description of the upcoming FCA conference, titled “The Cost of Goodbye: Confronting Funeral Poverty in Our Communities.”

Funeral poverty and indigent burial continue to be overlooked issues that disproportionately impact marginalized communities. Rising funeral costs, limited access to affordable alternatives, and systemic inequities leave families burdened with overwhelming expenses and difficult choices during times of grief. So this year’s conference challenges us to confront these injustices head-on. I hope to see you there!