Funding a capture

Most cemeteries that need this the most have the least money.

Municipal plots, church burial grounds, pioneer cemeteries run by three volunteers and a mower. Here is how those grounds actually get paid for.

Four routes that work

Sponsored, granted, budgeted, or raised.

Sponsor a capture

A family, a business, or a descendants’ association pays for one named cemetery’s capture directly. The sponsor is credited on the cemetery’s page. This is the simplest route and the one that moves fastest — no committee, no grant cycle.

Preservation grants

Historic cemeteries are often eligible through a State Historic Preservation Office, a county historical commission, or a local heritage fund. Digital documentation of at-risk markers is exactly what those programs are written for.

A friends-of group

Many historic cemeteries have — or can form — a 501(c)(3) friends or preservation society. That group can accept tax-deductible gifts and grants a cemetery company itself often cannot.

Municipal budget

City- and county-owned cemeteries can usually fund this out of parks, records, or IT rather than the cemetery line — it is a records project as much as a grounds project.

Straight answer

We don’t hold anybody else’s donations.

We are not a charity and we are not a payment processor for one. Taking in donations on a cemetery’s behalf would make us a middleman for other people’s restricted funds, and that is a job for the cemetery’s own non-profit or its municipality — not for a vendor.

What we do instead: a sponsor pays us for a specific cemetery’s capture, the same as any other customer would. Simple invoice, named cemetery, credit on the page. If the sponsor wants a charitable deduction, they give to the cemetery’s non-profit and the non-profit engages us.

On deductibility. Whether a gift is tax-deductible depends on what the receiving organisation is. Gifts to a 501(c)(3) preservation society, or to a city or county for public purposes, generally are. Gifts to a non-profit cemetery company under 501(c)(13) are treated differently — and money earmarked for the care of one particular plot generally is not deductible at all. None of this is tax advice: have the cemetery’s accountant confirm the treatment before anyone promises a donor a receipt.

Sources

  1. Internal Revenue Service, Cemetery Companies — IRC Section 501(c)(13) (Audit Technique Guide). Contributions must be irrevocably dedicated to the cemetery as a whole; a gift for the perpetual care of a particular lot or crypt is not deductible.
    https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/atg_cemetery_companies.pdf
  2. Internal Revenue Service, Publication 526, Charitable Contributions.
    https://www.irs.gov/publications/p526
  3. Nothing here is tax advice. Have the cemetery's own accountant confirm treatment before promising a donor a receipt.

Know a cemetery that needs this and can’t pay for it?

Tell us which one. We keep a list, and it is what we point sponsors and grant programs at.

Name the cemetery Talk about sponsoring