Below is the introduction to what we have built. It begins, as ohu did, with something personal.
You will notice how many of the frames carry a Celebration of Life theme. That is deliberate, and personal: it is in memory of my mother, who lived into her early nineties, and we felt the truest way to remember her was to celebrate her life.
So we built ohu from the ground up, specifically for the funeral sector and for the two things that had failed us: the early death notice, and the fortnight of coordination that has to follow it. Over three years we have drawn a library of many hundreds of frames, each one suggested automatically from what we already know about the family.
As we have not yet launched, I would value your thoughts on who we should be working with. I look forward to working with you again soon.
“
When she died there was no shortage of tribute services for the fuller story of a life, yet nothing made for the moment that comes first: a beautiful way to share the death notice itself.
Grant
The introduction follows
Best seen on a desktop. Do click any frame as you read, to see exactly how a family views it.
ohu · An introduction for UK Funeral Directors
ohu
A better way to help bereaved families announce a death, and keep everyone aligned in the days that follow.
The full introduction to what we have built, who we built it for, and why we believe the help a bereaved family needs during the hardest fortnight of their life should not come with a price tag. Written with executives in mind, it carries the detail that due-diligence teams will look for, and closes with our invitation to a small number of founding partners.
A short introduction to what we have built, who we built it for, and why we believe the help a bereaved family needs in the hardest fortnight of their life should never come with a price tag.
ForUK funeral directors and their arrangers
Before you begin
How would you like to read this?
Start with the shorter introduction. It keeps the heart of it and all of the frames, with the longer explanations trimmed. The full version is there whenever you want the detail, and you can switch between the two at any point.
Now readingThe complete read
Full introduction
Everything, in full detail
The whole story and every section, written with executives in mind.
All of the frames the families choose
The full explanations and the founder’s story
Includes the founding-partner invitation
Includes the questions due-diligence teams ask
Now readingThe essentials
Shorter introduction
A faster read
The same story and all the frames, with the longer explanations trimmed.
Keeps all of the frames, in full
Shortens the explanations throughout
Sets aside the founding-partner benefits
Sets aside the due-diligence questions
01For Funeral Directors
The first notice, and the fortnight that follows.
Around every funeral, the family only tells the people closest to them. Almost everyone else hears it from someone else: friend to friend, circle to circle, two and three steps removed from the family.
ohu does not replace that natural sharing. It makes it clearer, kinder and easier to manage, so everyone receives the same message and the family can see who has been informed, and who may still be missing.
ohu is built for this one moment: the first notice of a death, and the fortnight of coordination that follows. The family is given only days to tell a hundred to a hundred and twenty people, with none of the help a wedding takes for granted. ohu gives them a simple way to share the notice, gather replies, send updates and make sure no one important is missed, working alongside the partners and services your firm already trusts.
ohu has been built specifically for this moment: the first notice of a death, and the fortnight of communication and coordination that follows.
That outward ripple is why the fortnight is so hard. The family never quite knows who has been told and who has been missed. They have little idea how many people will come, so seating and catering become guesswork; and afterwards, thanking people is hardest of all, because they never knew who many of them were.
And the family is given days to manage it. A wedding with the same number of guests is given a year, a small industry of help and any number of apps built for the job. A funeral has none of that, at the very moment a family feels least in control. We know because, after more than 25 years working alongside the UK funeral sector, we lived it ourselves. It convinced us that someone had to build the answer, and it has taken us nearly three years. That story is told a little later in this introduction.
ohu gives families a simple way to share the first notice of a death, provide funeral details, manage replies, send updates and make sure no one important is missed, while working alongside your existing partners and the services already trusted in the sector.
100–120People to tell
14Days to coordinate
100Small details
0Rehearsals
What follows explains how it works, why the core digital tools are free, and how a small number of firms can help shape ohu into something genuinely useful for the sector.
02Why this matters
The death notice is its own moment.
The death notice is easily confused with what comes later, so it is worth being precise. There are two moments around every funeral, and they do two different jobs.
The first hours and days
The death notice
The earliest announcement of all. It goes out before the funeral has a date, and for most of the people who receive it, it is the very first they learn that the person has died. It has to carry the news itself: gently, immediately, to people in very different states of readiness to hear it.
Later, once the date is known
The tribute
A different moment with a different job. Tributes circulate once the funeral date is set, and rightly gather photographs, memories and the fuller story of a life. They follow the notice.
Why there is no photograph
We learned this from the inside, when we went looking for a death notice for our mother. We wanted a design that reflected her as a person and the tone we felt her funeral should take. And we learned how exposed this first moment is: a photograph, so soon after a death, can be too much for the person opening the notice, and choosing the right one is a decision no family should face on day one. So an ohu death notice carries the name, the dates and the family’s own words, set in a frame chosen with care. The photographs belong to the tribute, later, when everyone is readier for them.
An ohu death notice carries only the name, the dates and the family’s own words, set in a frame chosen with care. A photograph can be too much so soon after a death, and choosing the right one is a decision no family should face on day one. The photographs belong to the tribute, later.
The sentence that has governed three years of work
A death notice is the last thing a family will ever publish for someone they love. It should feel made by hand, in front of them.
Hundreds of designs
One for every kind of funeral, from the most colourful celebration of life to the quietest traditional farewell. The right one is found in moments, not hours.
Easy to share
The notice travels into every circle the family chooses, and quietly shows them who has been told and who has not.
Earlier, by design
The death notice comes earliest in the journey, before the tribute pages, newspaper notices and donation routes you already offer. It fills that earlier gap, and never competes with them.
03Our story
Where ohu began.
ohu did not begin in a boardroom. It began in the fortnight after my mother died, when my sister and I set about reaching the hundred or so people who needed to know, and found there was nothing built to help us do it.
My mother was in her early nineties, so her death was not a sudden shock. What we had not expected was how the fortnight that followed, with its telling, organising and answering, would crowd out the time we had hoped to spend simply being together. That same season we found ourselves at three funerals and four weddings, and the contrast was impossible to miss.
My mother was in her early nineties, so her death was not a sudden shock. What we had not expected was how quickly the practical work of telling, organising and answering would crowd out the time we had hoped to spend simply being together.
It was a strange summer. Within a few months our family found itself at three funerals and four weddings. Every wedding had a year or more of planning, and people whose whole purpose was to help: to send the invitations, gather the replies, count the guests and keep everyone informed. The funerals were given days, and nothing at all for the part that mattered every bit as much: letting people know, holding them together, making sure no one was forgotten.
A wedding is given a year and a small industry to help it. A funeral is given a fortnight and a phone.
We could only reach the people we knew; from there the news travelled third and fourth hand, and we never knew who had heard. Almost twice as many people came as we had prepared for, and afterwards we could not thank many of them, because we did not know who they were. My son and I set out to build the thing we had needed and could not find, and it has taken us nearly three years.
The service itself was in safe hands; that was never the gap. The gap was everything around it. My sister and I could only tell the people we knew ourselves. From there the news travelled through others, friend to friend, often reaching people third or fourth hand whom we had no way to reach. We simply never knew who had heard, and who was still waiting to be told.
In the end, almost twice as many people came as we had prepared for. We were short on seats and short on catering on the day; and afterwards we could not thank many of those who had come to honour her, because we did not know who they were.
We kept coming back to the same thought. A wedding with these numbers would have had a year and a team behind it. We had a fortnight and each other. Surely the moment that matters most should not be the one with the least help.
My son had watched my sister and me go through all of this, and afterwards he and I set out to build the thing we had needed and could not find. We had spent years working alongside the funeral profession, but nothing teaches you a gap like living through it. It has taken us nearly three years to design every element for this one moment: the early notice, the fortnight of coordination, and the quiet dignity it demands.
Take a simple idea and take it seriously.Charlie Munger
The simple idea behind ohu is that the hardest fortnight in a family’s life deserves as much help as the happiest. We built it so that no family has to feel the helplessness we felt in those two weeks.
Munger’s words became our method. The simple idea behind ohu is that the hardest fortnight in a family’s life deserves as much help as the happiest. We have spent nearly three years taking that idea seriously, and we built ohu so that no family has to feel the helplessness we felt in those two weeks. That is the spirit in which we would like to work with you.
04The three things we do
What ohu actually does.
Before we say what ohu is, a sentence about what we are not. We are not a replacement for the phone calls, the in person conversations, or the notice in the local paper. Those remain the right way to tell the people closest to the family. ohu is what has been missing alongside all of that.
A beautiful death notice, shared with the people who need to know, and one calm place that keeps everyone aligned as plans change.
Click to enlargeAn ohu death notice, in one of the family's chosen frames · click to enlarge
The insight we kept coming back to
Families in the UK now announce a death through the same tools they use to share a holiday photo, a school-group reminder or a football score.
Facebook is too public. WhatsApp is too chaotic. Group texts get out of date the moment plans change. Email gets lost. None of these tools were designed for bereavement, and the family ends up running the whole communications job like a switchboard, at the moment they have least capacity for it.
ohu is the first service in the UK built specifically for the early death notice and the fortnight of coordination that has to follow it.
For the bereaved family
A beautifully presented death notice, shared once with the circles who need to know, with a clear list of who has been informed so nobody is missed. Friends, colleagues and distant relatives can add someone they think should know. Every change the family makes reaches everyone who has been told, so the family is not answering the same question fifty times.
For the day of the funeral
Most families still want the details of the funeral shared widely, as they always have. Offering friends and family the option to RSVP quietly lightens the load: ohu gathers the responses without the family having to chase for them, so catering, seating and the logistics of the day sit on real numbers rather than guesswork. People with questions look at ohu before picking up the phone.
For your firm
An announcement experience that presents beautifully and reflects the standard of service you provide, sitting alongside your existing newspaper notices and tribute pages. Private notices build visibility inside the real community around each funeral; public partner pages, branch pages and helpful early-bereavement resources can support local search separately. A short step inside the arranger's existing workflow, offered when you already discuss newspaper notices and online announcements, helps your families in so many ways over the fortnight that follows, and your firm's name and logo sit on every screen the family sees.
If something we build does not support at least one of these three, we do not ship it. It is the simplest discipline we have given ourselves, and it has shaped everything.
05The frames families choose
One notice. Hundreds of frames, each chosen by the family.
Every ohu death notice is set within a frame the family has chosen for the person they have lost. The library runs to many hundreds of designs, and the frames offered follow the theme the family selects, from a colourful celebration of life to the quietest, most traditional of farewells.
This is what the family's circle actually receives. Not a plain text message, a hurried post or a link that looks like every other link, but a considered piece of digital stationery, made for the moment and chosen with the person in mind. The designs on this page are a small sample of the library; click any frame to see it at full size.
Click to enlarge
Designed like fine stationery
Because for the family, it is stationery.
Each frame is drawn with the care of printed stationery: delicate florals, considered borders, quiet typography. The family chooses the frame in moments, the words stay theirs, and every detail of the funeral sits one tap beneath the notice.
However the family chooses to remember someone, there is a frame that feels right, and your firm's name travels with every one of them.
For a celebration of life
For a quieter, more traditional farewell
A small selection from a library of many hundreds: every faith, every culture, every kind of life. The family chooses; the notice does the rest.
06A service without a price tag
Why the help itself is free.
The help a bereaved family needs in the hardest fortnight of their life should not depend on anyone's ability or willingness to pay for it. That belief shaped ohu from day one, and it is the reason we have spent three patient years building.
The clearest way to describe it is the most familiar one. ohu is freemium, in the same shape as Google Maps: the part everyone actually uses has to be so good that nobody ever feels they need to upgrade. If the free version has holes in it, the whole philosophy falls apart.
01
The free service has to be genuinely complete.
A free version that feels unfinished or deliberately frustrating is not generosity; it is a sales technique. ohu is not that. Everything a bereaved family needs, from announcing and gathering the right people to holding the details, keeping everyone aligned and sending a digital message, works in full, for free, every time. No paywall, no upsell, no tier to reach first.
02
When the free service is that good, it spreads.
This is not a lucky by-product; it is the whole mechanism. A family looked after properly recommends the service, forwards the notice, and uses it again when another death touches their circle. ohu travels the way good tools always have, through people telling other people, with no cold marketing and no selling asked of you.
03
A small minority, quietly, sustain it for everyone else.
When enough families are looked after well, a small fraction choose to do something more for their moment, almost always a beautifully printed condolence card. Those options sit quietly to the side, never a hurdle in front of the service. The vast majority of families are never asked for a penny, and the service is there in full for them regardless.
The free service has to stand on its own two feet. If it needs the paid options to feel complete, we have not built the right thing.
ohu, product principle, written in year one
In short
In short: ohu follows the same freemium model as WhatsApp, Google Maps and Zoom. The great majority never spend a penny; the few who do, in ohu’s case the friends and family who send a beautifully printed card, sustain the service for everyone else. Everything you and the family touch is, and stays, free.
07Alongside what you already offer
We sit earlier in the journey, and elevate what you already offer.
Click to enlargeThe notice arrives beautifully presented, wherever the family shares it
ohu is deliberately narrow. We do the early death notice and the fortnight of coordination that has to follow it. We do not try to replace your tribute provision, your notices or your donation pathways. We sit earlier in the journey and make every one of those services easier for the family to find.
Every firm has its own carefully chosen partners for the longer-term pieces of the service: the tribute page you use, the funeral notices you publish, and the charity and donation choices you offer each family. We work with whatever you already use. Your choices stay your choices.
Your tribute choice
Whatever tribute provision you offer families, your own or a partner platform, ohu points the family's circle towards it at the right moment in the announcement, so more of the people who cared about the deceased arrive at your tribute page rather than never finding it. Tributes naturally come later, circulated once the funeral date is known; ohu’s work is the earlier moment, and it hands the circle on to your tribute at exactly the right time.
Your notices
Your newspaper notice, your website notice, and any other publication you already use continue exactly as before. ohu becomes a private channel that reaches the people the family identifies, and strengthens rather than replaces the notices you already place.
Your charity and donation choices
Many funeral directors already work closely with charity and donation partners. We incorporate those partner flows into ours, so the family's nominated causes reach the whole circle in the way your firm has chosen. Your strategy leads, we make it easier for the wider circle to follow through.
How ohu elevates your existing services
Because ohu reaches the family in the very first hours of their bereavement, before the newspaper notice is placed and before the tribute page is shared, we can help the whole circle of friends and family, not just the closest few, find the services your firm already offers. Everyone has more time to see the benefits, and we work with each firm to make sure these services are presented in the right way for your approach and branding.
More of the circle reaches your tribute page
When a tribute page is linked from the ohu notice, it reaches every recipient the family has identified, not only those who happen to see a Facebook post or a newspaper notice. Your tribute service gets more visible to the people most likely to contribute.
The family's choices travel further
The charities the family has chosen, the way they have worded the donation ask, the tribute provider you have recommended, all reach the full circle through one calm, private channel. Small gaps in reach, which tend to cost your firm's existing services visibility, quietly close.
08The difference ohu makes
What changes in the fortnight around a death.
The clearest way to explain ohu is a short picture of before and after. Most families have a hundred to a hundred and twenty friends, colleagues and relatives who need to be kept in step. A wedding is given a year or more to arrange; a family around a death is given a fortnight. Nobody is ready for coordination at that scale, in that window. Until now, there has been nothing built specifically for it.
Most families have a hundred to a hundred and twenty people to keep in step, and a fortnight to do it. Here is the difference ohu makes, from day one to day fourteen.
What changes, from day one to day fourteen
A calm, fitting place for the death notice and the fortnight of coordination.
Without ohu
The news goes out through WhatsApp, Facebook, SMS, email and phone, across whichever apps each person happens to use.
Nobody, including the family, knows for sure who has actually been told.
When plans change, the update reaches some people and misses others; friends and relatives hold different versions of the truth.
The same questions are asked, and answered, at all hours of the day and night.
A hundred to a hundred and twenty people to keep aligned, in a fortnight, at the moment the family has the least capacity for it.
With ohu
One beautifully framed death notice, shared in the circles the family chooses.
A quiet, running view of who has actually received it, and who has not.
When plans change, the update reaches everyone at once, in the same place.
The family is asked once, and answers once. Every friend and relative sees the current picture.
The fortnight of coordination is held in one place, freeing the family to be present with one another.
When we lived through this ourselves, we saw there was nothing made for this moment in a family's life. The family deserves help with it, and this is what we set out to build.
From first screen to last, the experience feels like part of your firm's service. Not only because your firm is the one putting it into the family's hands, but because every page, message and update the family and their circle see carries your firm's name, contact details and branding alongside ours.
09For the bereaved organiser
The part families are left to manage themselves.
In most UK funerals, the funeral director looks after the funeral itself. The wider announcement and the fortnight of family communication usually sit with the family.
In most UK funerals, the funeral director is responsible for arranging and conducting the funeral itself. That is the work families rightly trust you to do.
But the announcement of the death, and the fortnight of communication around it, usually sits somewhere else. It sits with the family.
They make the first phone calls. They tell the people closest to them. They ask others to pass the news on. They try to remember old friends, neighbours, former colleagues, church friends, club members and distant relatives. They answer the same questions again and again. They guess how many people may come to the service, the committal, the wake or the reception. And afterwards, they often do not know everyone who came, wrote, donated or helped share the news.
That is not a criticism of funeral directors. It is simply the way the system has grown up. Funeral directors may help with a notice on their website, a tribute page, a newspaper announcement or donation information, but they are not usually the people directly managing the family's wider announcement network. Nor should they have to become that.
ohu has been built for that missing layer. It gives the family a private organiser view around the notice: who has been told, who has been added, who has shared the notice on, who is coming to each part of the funeral, and what private messages have been sent. It gives them one calm place to hold the communication that would otherwise be scattered across phone calls, WhatsApp, Facebook, texts, email and memory.
This is not social media. There is no public feed, no performance of grief, and no expectation that the family should reply publicly. It is a private coordination tool for the people who need to know.
For the funeral director, the boundary stays clear. Your firm remains responsible for the funeral arrangements, exactly as today. ohu supports the family with the communication layer around the early notice, updates, RSVPs, private messages and optional cards. The family remains in control of the circle. Your arrangers are not being asked to manage a guest list, chase replies, organise a wake, moderate messages or become a family switchboard.
The benefit is that the family is less lost, and the funeral is less surrounded by guesswork. When a family can see who has been told and who is likely to attend, the practical decisions around seating, venue planning, catering and later thanks become calmer and better informed.
Who has been told
A clear view of who has received the notice, who has been added, and where the family may still need help reaching friends, colleagues, neighbours or relatives.
Who is coming
Replies by event, not just one headline number. The family can see responses for the service, committal, wake, reception, viewing or livestream where relevant.
Private messages and later thanks
Friends and relatives can send private words to the family, and afterwards the family has a clearer record of who came, who wrote, who donated and who may need to be thanked.
Alongside your existing partners
Where a firm already uses a partner such as MuchLoved for donations, tribute content, funeral details or RSVPs, ohu can sit around that service rather than replace it. The partner remains the source of the donation page, tribute page or RSVP flow where that is the firm's choice. ohu introduces it earlier, from the first private notice, and helps the family's wider circle find it at the right moment.
The family gets one calm starting point. The funeral director keeps the relationships and workflows they already trust. The partner gets earlier visibility. ohu fills the private communication gap around it.
10How we work with your firm
The practical shape of a partnership.
A short, plain-English picture of how a working relationship with ohu actually runs, so nothing about the mechanics is a surprise later on.
How the family sees it
Every screen the family uses carries your firm's logo and name alongside the ohu wordmark. It is clear to them that your firm is looking after the funeral, and that ohu is the service you have made available to them for the communications around it.
Who the family talks to
For the funeral itself, your arrangers, exactly as today. For the announcement, RSVPs, digital messages and cards, ohu. Two named roles, clearly drawn, working to the same end.
Approval and control
ohu is only ever used when a family chooses it, after your arranger has offered it as part of your firm's service. Nothing goes out without your arranger's set-up and the family's own words.
Support
A named contact on our side for every firm we work with. Both your arrangers and the bereaved families they look after have direct WhatsApp support with us.
11What it quietly does for your firm
The fortnight that carries your name, with care, to a hundred people.
Everything in this document has begun with the family, because helping them through the hardest fortnight of their lives is the reason ohu exists. But it is fair to ask what it does for your firm. The honest answer is that it offers one of the most valuable things a funeral director can have, earned in the one way that cannot be bought.
Here is something most funeral directors know and rarely say aloud. You do not seek promotion, and rightly so; the work is quiet by nature. But there is a cost to that quietness. A family can be looked after with enormous care, the funeral conducted faultlessly, and a fortnight later few of those who attended could say which firm conducted it. The firm's name lived briefly on a notice in the paper and on an order of service quietly folded into a drawer. The care is remembered. The name behind it often is not.
That matters more than it first appears, because families do not choose a funeral director from an advertisement. They choose the name a friend, a relative or a member of the clergy gave them, or the firm their family has turned to before. Reputation, passed quietly from one person to the next, is what fills a funeral director's diary.
Why this is the exposure that counts
A funeral director is chosen by reputation and recommendation, almost never by advertising.
Industry research into how families find a funeral director points the same way again and again: the great majority arrive through personal recommendation (a friend, a relative, a member of the clergy) or return to a firm their family has used before. Word of mouth, not reach, is the largest single route to a funeral director's door.
So the real question was never how to advertise more. It is how to become the name the next hundred families are quietly given. The fortnight around a death is the most natural way there is to do exactly that, but only if your name is genuinely present within it.
How ohu carries your name, gently, across the whole fortnight
Because your firm hands ohu to the family, every screen their circle sees is presented as yours: your name and details carried through the whole fortnight, not a logo glimpsed once but a presence tied to a moment of real care.
Because your firm is the one who hands ohu to the family, every screen their circle sees is presented as your firm's: not a logo glimpsed once, but your name and details carried through the whole fortnight of coordination. It becomes the most natural name exposure a funeral director has ever had: repeated, dignified, and never once feeling like an advertisement.
Far more than a logo
The family's home screen carries your firm's name, the years you have cared for your community, your own words, the area you cover and a number that reaches you day or night, and your name returns on every update, RSVP and message their circle opens across the fortnight.
Tied to a moment of real care
Your name is seen at the exact moment your firm is looking after a family well. People remember who was there for them when it mattered most. That association is the one thing no advertisement can manufacture.
Within the community you serve
These are the neighbours, colleagues and friends who quietly shape a firm's reputation. When someone they know later asks which funeral director to trust, yours is the name they remember, and the name they pass on.
~100People who see your name, per notice
14Days your name is gently present
0Spent on advertising
1Name they come to remember
This is the opposite of advertising. It is your good name, attached to the moment you served a family well, carried with care to the people most likely to pass it on. It costs your firm nothing, asks nothing of your arrangers beyond a two-minute hand-over, and never asks a family for a penny. Founding partners, as the next section sets out, receive this quiet visibility earliest of all, and keep it for life.
This is the opposite of advertising: your good name, attached to the moment you served a family well, carried with care to the people most likely to pass it on. It costs your firm nothing, asks nothing of your arrangers beyond a two-minute hand-over, and never asks a family for a penny.
The end of the shorter introduction
There is more, when you have the time.
That is ohu in brief: the moment, the frames the families choose, and what the fortnight quietly does for your firm. The full introduction adds the parts set aside here: why the help is free, the practical shape of a partnership, our founding-partner invitation, and the questions due-diligence teams tend to ask.
12Founding partner invitation
A lifetime thank you for the firms who help us get this right.
We are selecting a carefully chosen group of leading UK funeral directors to work with us in the early days of ohu: firms we admire, whose judgment we trust, and whose honest feedback will help us shape ohu into what the sector needs. In exchange, we are making a commitment that goes well beyond a normal partnership.
Our promise to founding partners
Everything ohu currently provides free to funeral directors and their families stays free, for founding partners, for the life of the service.
The core announcement service, the arranger dashboard, event management, RSVPs, digital messages, FAQs, co-branding, notice pages and sharing, together with every improvement we add to the free service over the years ahead. As some of these services move to paid tiers for firms joining later, founding partners are guaranteed, in writing, that they will not.
The one thing this does not cover is the optional, physically printed greeting cards, which sit outside the free service and are paid for by the sender.
What founding partners receive
The announcement service
Creating, styling and delivering the early death notice. Recipient management and a clear view of who has been informed.
The arranger dashboard
The tool your arrangers use to set up a notice in a couple of minutes and hand over. All enhancements included as they arrive.
Events & RSVPs
Services, wakes, receptions, viewings. Three attendance types and full RSVP tracking with real numbers for catering and logistics.
Updates & sharing
Real-time updates to every recipient when plans change, plus controlled sharing that widens the circle without losing control.
Digital messages & FAQs
Private in-app messages from recipients to the family, and a single place to answer the questions guests always ask.
Co-branding
Your firm’s name and logo on every screen the family sees, carried with care across the whole fortnight of coordination.
Priority onboarding & named contact
White-glove setup, brief arranger training, and a named partnership contact who responds within the working day.
Roadmap input
A direct voice in what we build next. Feature requests from founding partners are prioritised above other sources.
All future free-tier features
Anything we add to the free service in the years ahead is guaranteed to stay free for founding partners.
What we ask in return
Offer ohu to a small number of suitable families in the early months, at the family's discretion.
Honest feedback from your arrangers. Criticism early, not politely late.
A named arranger champion as our day-to-day contact.
Two short calls in the first month.
What we explicitly do not ask
No up-front fee, ever, for founding partners.
No integration work. We do the technical setup.
No exclusivity. You may work with any other supplier.
No marketing obligations and no minimum volume.
Best wishes,
Grant McKerron
CEO, ohu
13Due diligence
Questions likely to come up in due diligence.
Click any question to open the answer. These are the questions we expect partners and their due-diligence teams to raise, grouped to make them easy to scan.
The founding partner phase
What is the founding partner phase?
The founding partner phase is a structured period of working with a small number of funeral directors before wider release.
ohu has been built around one specific job: helping families make an early death notice and keep people aligned during the fortnight of communication that follows. The founding partner phase is about refining how that service fits into real funeral-director workflows, branch routines, governance requirements and family conversations.
This is not about testing an unfinished idea on families. It is about taking a carefully built service and shaping it with the firms who understand the realities of bereavement care.
Why are you starting with a small number of firms?
Because the quality of early feedback matters more than volume.
We want to work with firms who will tell us honestly where the product is useful, where the wording needs changing, where the workflow should be lighter, and where corporate governance needs more detail.
The aim is not to roll out fast. The aim is to reach proper product-market fit in a sector where trust, timing and tone matter.
What are you looking to learn from funeral directors?
We are looking to learn the things that only become visible in practice.
How arrangers naturally introduce the service. Which parts families understand immediately. Where a branch needs more control. What legal, IT and data-protection teams need before approving wider adoption. Which features reduce questions and which create them.
That feedback directly shapes the product and the partner model.
What does success look like in the first few months?
Success is practical, not abstract.
A family can share a private death notice without chasing dozens of separate messages. People who should know are less likely to be missed. Updates reach the right circle when details change. RSVPs and questions are easier to manage. Arrangers can introduce the service without it becoming another administrative burden.
For the firm, success means the service feels useful, safe, well-governed and easy to explain.
Success also means your firm is present earlier, and with more of the people who matter. Because the family shares the notice and their circle passes it on, your firm reaches an early, natural link with people who have not yet chosen a funeral director, long before they ever need one.
And it means your firm is woven into the wider experience around the funeral: the hundred or more friends, colleagues and relatives who gather around each death see your name and your care throughout the fortnight. Not as advertising, but as the firm that looked after someone well.
What do you need from a founding partner firm?
We ask for a light but thoughtful working relationship.
A named contact. A small number of suitable families offered the service when appropriate. Honest feedback from arrangers. Short review conversations in the early weeks. A willingness to let us learn from the details rather than only from the headline outcome.
We do not ask for exclusivity, minimum volumes, branch-wide rollout, integration work or marketing commitments.
How will our feedback be used?
Directly and visibly.
We will keep a clear product and operations backlog from founding partner feedback. Where something changes because of a partner's input, we will say so. Where we cannot make a change, we will explain why.
The point of the founding phase is not to collect polite endorsements. It is to make the service better.
The service itself
What does ohu actually do?
ohu helps a family create a private, beautifully presented death notice and keep people updated in the days that follow.
It can hold funeral details, reception information, directions, livestream links, tribute links, charity or donation information, RSVPs, guest questions and digital messages. Recipients can also send a physical card if they want to, with ohu handling design, print and post.
The service is deliberately focused on the communication layer around the early notice and the immediate coordination period.
What problem is ohu solving?
Families now often announce a death through the same tools they use for everyday life: WhatsApp, Facebook, text messages and email.
Those tools are familiar, but they were not designed for bereavement. Information fragments quickly. People are missed. Plans change. The family ends up answering the same questions repeatedly at the point when they have least capacity.
ohu gives the family one calm place for the notice, the details and the updates.
How does ohu sit alongside existing notices, tribute pages and donation routes?
ohu sits earlier in the journey.
Your newspaper notices, website notices, tribute pages, charity links and donation pathways continue as they are. ohu helps the family's circle find those existing services at the right moment, through the private notice and update flow.
The firm's existing choices stay intact. ohu makes them easier for the right people to reach.
Is the core service really free?
Yes.
The announcement service, event details, RSVPs, updates, digital messages and core family experience are free to use. This is not a free trial and not a limited teaser.
The free service has to stand on its own. That principle is already central to our freemium thinking: the core product must be genuinely useful without needing a paid upgrade to make it work.
How does ohu sustain itself commercially?
Through optional premium layers, not by restricting the core service.
The clearest example is the physical greeting card service. If someone receiving a notice wants to send a thoughtful printed card, ohu can design, print and post it. That is optional, contextual and paid.
The family does not need to pay to make the notice work properly.
How do physical cards fit into the experience?
Physical cards are an optional way for friends, colleagues and relatives to send something tangible.
They are not required for the notice, the event details or RSVPs. They sit quietly alongside the free service for people who want to send something more considered than a text message but do not know what to choose or write.
ohu handles the design, wording support, printing and posting, so the funeral director is not asked to manage a fulfilment process.
How does the contact expansion work?
The family starts with the people they know should be told.
Recipients can then suggest others who may need to know: old colleagues, neighbours, club members, distant relatives or friends from earlier parts of the deceased's life. This helps close the gaps that often appear when a family is trying to remember everyone under pressure.
The family remains in control of the notice and the circle around it.
What happens when funeral details change?
The family or authorised arranger can update the notice once.
Everyone already included in the notice receives the updated information through the same private channel. This avoids the usual chain of repeated calls, forwarded screenshots and out-of-date group messages.
This is particularly important when dates, times, venues or livestream details change.
How it works with your firm
How would an arranger introduce ohu to a family?
As part of the normal arrangement meeting, in language that fits naturally with how arrangers already help families share the news.
For example:
"I can now give you Sarah's death notice. It sits alongside phone calls, conversations in person and any newspaper notice, and it can be shared by friends and family, so the right people hear directly and nobody is missed.
It also gives everyone one clear place to return to for the details and any updates over the next fortnight. That helps you see who has been told and gives you a better sense of how many people are likely to come to the funeral and the reception or wake.
We would usually begin with the immediate family, who already know, and they can then help share it with their own contacts."
How much extra work does this create for the arranger?
The product is designed so the arranger's role is light.
The arranger sets up the notice, checks the key details, applies the right presets and hands control to the family. The service is not intended to create a second administrative system for the branch.
During the founding partner phase, one of the things we want to measure carefully is whether the setup feels light enough in a real arrangement environment.
Does ohu need to integrate with our existing systems?
Yes. ohu is designed to reduce time and effort for arrangers by using an API to pull simple standard information that has already been captured in your funeral management software.
This avoids unnecessary re-entry of details, reduces repetition and errors, and saves time for both your arrangers and the family. The result is a quicker, lighter setup process built around information your team is already capturing as part of the normal arrangement workflow.
How is our firm presented to the family?
ohu is presented as a specialist service your firm has chosen to offer free to bereaved families to help ensure nobody is missed and to make communication around the funeral easier to manage.
Your firm's name, details and branding remain central throughout the family experience. ohu is clearly identified as the specialist provider of private, targeted death notices and ongoing communication, while the funeral director remains the lead throughout everything around the funeral.
This is intentionally different from wider channels such as local and national newspaper notices. Those channels are designed for broad reach. ohu is designed for focused, private and ongoing communication with the people who should see the notice and any later updates.
Who supports the family if they need help?
ohu supports the family with the notice, messages, RSVPs and cards.
Your arrangers remain focused on the funeral arrangement itself. We do not want branches carrying product-support questions that should sit with us.
During the founding partner phase, every participating firm has a named ohu contact and a clear route for support.
What if a family is not confident online?
ohu supports the family's communication. It does not replace personal calls or other ways of telling people about a death.
Often a younger relative will manage the notice and updates for the wider family. This helps keep everyone aligned, gives people the same answers to common questions, and helps the family manage communication and likely attendance over the fortnight.
Security, data and compliance
How has ohu been built from a security perspective?
ohu is being built with enterprise-software discipline from the start.
The family business behind ohu has more than 25 years' experience working with the funeral sector and the NHS, and over 20 years delivering outsourced services for major UK banks, including large operational contracts at the scale of more than 500 people.
That background matters. It means security, process, access control, auditability, resilience and governance are not being added late. They are part of the way the service is being built.
Where is the data stored?
ohu is cloud-hosted, with hosting and governance designed around UK and European expectations.
For corporate partners, we provide details of hosting arrangements, data regions, sub-processors and transfer safeguards as part of the due diligence pack.
The important principle is that cloud hosting does not mean loose governance. Data location, supplier access, retention and controls are all documented.
Who is the data controller?
For the ohu service layer, ohu acts as an independent data controller.
That means ohu takes responsibility for the privacy notices, data rights, retention, recipient communications, PECR controls, supplier governance and service-layer processing that sit within ohu.
Your firm remains responsible for its own arrangement records and internal systems. The boundary between the two is clearly set out in the data-protection schedule.
How do you handle GDPR and PECR?
ohu handles data protection and electronic communications within the service so arrangers are not left carrying that burden.
Recipient contact details are used only for the specific death notice and related funeral communications. We do not add people to marketing lists, we do not send general marketing, and we do not use those details for unrelated commercial purposes.
Messages are limited to the notice, funeral details, updates, RSVPs and family communication. Any optional service shown within ohu is presented only in that context and does not change this position.
Will recipient data be sold or used for other purposes?
No.
Recipient details are used only for the specific death notice and related funeral communication. We do not sell them, rent them, add them to marketing lists, or use them for unrelated commercial purposes.
This is a core trust principle for ohu.
Does ohu use AI?
Yes, but quietly and with human control.
AI may help suggest wording, select suitable card designs or reduce the amount of blank-page thinking a family or recipient faces. It does not approve notices, send messages on its own or make funeral decisions.
The family, and where relevant the arranger, remain in control of what is shared.
Will family or recipient data be used to train public AI models?
No.
Our position is that funeral, family and recipient data should not be used to train public AI models. Where AI suppliers are used, they are reviewed as part of our security, privacy and sub-processor governance.
What availability is ohu built for?
ohu is being built as high-availability enterprise software, with monitoring, backups and operational processes appropriate to a service that families may rely on during a short and sensitive window.
During the founding partner phase, the engineering target is at least 99% uptime. As the service moves into broader corporate deployment, formal service levels, support response times and escalation routes can be agreed.
Are you ISO 27001 certified?
Not yet.
ohu is on the path to early ISO 27001 accreditation. We will not claim certification until it has been independently audited and awarded.
In the meantime, we can share our security-control approach, roadmap and due diligence materials with partner firms.
Corporate due diligence
What due diligence materials can you provide?
We can provide a due diligence pack under NDA. This can include:
Company overview
Security overview
Data-flow diagrams
Hosting and sub-processor details
API architecture
GDPR and PECR model
Retention and deletion approach
Incident response process
Business-continuity summary
Insurance summary
ISO 27001 roadmap
Support model
Draft heads of terms
Data-protection schedule
The aim is to make review straightforward for legal, IT, procurement and data-protection teams.
What experience do you have with large corporate environments?
ohu is new, but the operating experience behind it is not.
The business has worked with the UK funeral sector and NHS, and has over 20 years' experience delivering outsourced operations for major UK banks. That work required disciplined process, security, governance, auditability, client reporting and operational resilience at large scale.
We are bringing those standards into ohu from the beginning.
What would the heads of terms cover?
The heads of terms should be plain, proportionate and familiar to a corporate funeral director. They would usually cover:
Purpose of the founding partner phase
Services included
Branches or regions included
Responsibilities of each party
Data protection and PECR
Security and hosting
Support model
Branding and co-branding
Confidentiality
Restricted activities
Commercial terms
Live-notice continuity
Data export and deletion
Liability
IP ownership
Review points and next-step process
The document should feel like a sensible service agreement, not an over-engineered enterprise software contract.
How do you define the boundary of the ohu service?
The boundary is the communication layer around the early death notice and the fortnight of coordination that follows.
For clarity, the agreement can include a restricted-activities schedule. That schedule would confirm that ohu will not offer or broker funeral directing, funeral planning, prepaid funeral plans, flowers, probate, estate administration, legal services, financial services, insurance, CRM software or funeral case-management software.
This is not because we think the boundary is unclear. It is because putting the boundary in writing is the simplest way to make corporate review easier.
Does this phase include practical flexibility?
Yes. The founding partner phase is intentionally structured to support learning, iteration and refinement through real use and regular feedback.
As we work with founding partners, we can adjust workflows, strengthen processes, refine documentation and phase features in the right order as we move towards product market fit. This ensures the service is shaped by real funeral director and family needs, not fixed too early in theory.
This gives both sides practical flexibility within a clear working structure.
