We are part of a larger community of organizations with an end-of-life focus. Visit these websites to learn more about the broader movements.

• Caregiver Action Network — is the nation’s leading family caregiver organization working to improve the quality of life for the more than 90 million Americans who care for loved ones with chronic conditions, disabilities, disease, or the frailties of old age.

• Celebrant Foundation and Institute — serves and embraces people from all walks of life by offering a gold-standard study program that educates and trains people to become a certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®.

• Compassion and Choices — A non-profit organization that offers information about Advanced Care Planning, including but not limited to Minnesota’s End of Life Options (bills: (HF1930 and SF 1813) as well as information about Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (known as VSED: Compassion and Choice’s VSED page).

• Conservation Burial Alliance — A dedicated group of owners, operators, advocates, and partners working together to support the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of conservation land that incorporates natural burial cemeteries.

• Funeral Consumers Alliance — works to ensure consumers are fully prepared and protected when planning a funeral for themselves or their loved ones.

• Green Burial Council​ — seeks to inspire and advocate for environmentally sustainable, natural death care through education and certification.

• National End-of-Life Doula Alliance — is a non-profit membership organization that welcomes and supports all end-of-life doulas, trainers, and interested parties, regardless of background or level of experience.

• National Home Funeral Alliance — educating families about end-of-life choices, including natural death care and home funerals.

• National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization — As the leading organization representing integrated, person-centered healthcare, NHPCO gives ongoing inspiration, practical guidance, and legislative representation to hospice and palliative care providers so they can enrich  experiences for patients and ease caregiving responsibilities and emotional stress for families.

• The Conversation Project® — is a public engagement initiative with a goal that is both simple and transformative: to have every person’s wishes for end-of-life care be expressed and respected.

• Threshold Care Circle — helps family rediscover traditional folkways of a home vigil and family-directed funeral. Based in Viroqua, WI.

What happens after your loved one/patient/client dies:

• A Checklist: Practical Steps You Can Take In The Early Days — Provided via American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).

• Our team of professional members are here to help you, here are many of the deathcare roles that we include in our collaborative: https://www.mndeathcollaborative.org/deathcare-roles as well as a link to our MNDC Directory.

For those who may be interested in training as as End of Life/Death Doula and/or are curious about these training options, we invite you to review our Minnesota Death Collaborative Scholarship site for further information: https://www.mndeathcollaborative.org/scholarships

• Books: MNDC Bookclub reads: https://www.mndeathcollaborative.org/book-club

• Watch: 

1. Encountering Grief, a meditation with Roshi Joan Halifax — Roshi Joan Halifax is a zen abbot and medical anthropologist. In this guided meditation, she shares nourishing wisdom as we face suffering in the world, helping us to find the inner resources to carry our own grief and sadness and that of others. (This meditation was featured in the episode “Finding Buoyancy Amidst Despair” on Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast.)

2. End Game — This Academy Award-nominated short documentary explores the difficult choices patients and their loved ones face at the end of life and how their care teams help them navigate this experience. Currently streaming on Netflix.

3. How Do You Help A Grieving Friend? — It is  so hard to know what to do when your friends are hurting. The thing is, you can't cheer someone up by telling them to look on the bright side, or by giving them advice. It just doesn't work. Watch this video to learn the one thing that will improve all of your "I'm here for you" intentions, and be that supportive friend you most want to be.

4. The Order of the Good Death — The Order is about making death a part of your life. That means committing to staring down your death fears — whether it be your own death, the death of those you love, the pain of dying, the afterlife (or lack thereof), grief, corpses, bodily decomposition, or all of the above. Accepting that death itself is natural, but the death anxiety and terror of modern culture are not.

5. What Happens As We Die? — Most of us have never seen anyone die. Few have any idea what to expect as death approaches, and most have unrealistic fears about it. Kathryn Mannix wants to change that. Her Tedx Talk explores what happens as we die, and explains how knowing more can make us all less afraid.

6. What I learned about life from death, Jane Whitlock — Jane Whitlock, aka, Doula Jane, is an end-of-life doula (and also one of our founding  Minnesota Death Collaborative Steering Committee members). Whitlock provides guidance and emotional support for individuals and families through the end-of-life process. Why is it okay to ask strangers at the supermarket about their pregnancy but not about their impending death?  

7. Virtual coffee date with Death Doula, Jane Whitlock —Jane Whitlock talks openly over a cup of coffee about the role of being an End-of-Life Doula.  

• Listen

1. End of life University — If you are searching for information about aging, later life, death and dying, you will LOVE this podcast! EOLU features interviews with experts from all aspects of the end-of-life and is hosted by hospice physician Dr. Karen Wyatt.

2. NPR News with Kari Miller — a conversation with Kerri Miller and Dr. BJ Miller.  They share advice that's both practical — like tips for cleaning up your attic — to the more pithy — like advice on how to tell someone you're dying. The authors join MPR News host Kerri Miller for a conversation about why they were inspired to write this guide, and why planning for death can be more comforting than you might think.

3. All There Is with Anderson Cooper — this podcast is about the people we lose, the people left behind, and how we can live on – with loss and with love.

• Children’s Grief: 

1. Watch:

• Coco — Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family's ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, a legendary singer. Available for online streaming. (Available on several streaming platforms.)

2. Books: 

• Books & Resources to Help Kids & Teens — this list is from the Center for Grief and Loss

• 25 Children's Books That Explain Death And Grief To Kids — this list is from the Huffington Post.

3. The Shared Grief Project — envisions a world where no child grieves alone. To achieve this, this project shares the stories of individuals who have experienced a major loss at an early age and have gone on to live healthy, happy and successful lives.