What is the Ari Foss Foundation?

The Ari Foss Foundation is a registered non-profit in South Carolina. The Ari Foss Foundation has two primary missions:

Mission One – to provide education and resources to help families pay for funeral/burial expenses resulting from stillborn and infant deaths.
Mission Two – to provide financial assistance for basic funeral/burial expenses resulting from stillborn and infant deaths in South Carolina.

Mission One
When a family experiences a stillborn death, there are potentially three stresses 1 – physical stress of labor (or C Section), 2 – emotional stress of losing a child and 3 – financial stress of planning and paying for a funeral.

There are a lot of resources available for all three stresses, and plenty of organizations provide information about coping with physical and emotional stress. Unfortunately, no one actively talks about the financial stress.

The information is out there. There is A LOT of information about paying for funeral expenses available on the internet, and there are a few organizations who provide financial assistance for funeral expenses. The problem is the information is passive, and families must search for it.

When a family is experiencing a traumatic loss, they are not thinking about conducting research about funeral options (including payment options). With the Ari Foss Foundation, we want to get the necessary information into the hands of grieving parents when they need it rather than waiting for them to look for the information. The Ari Foss Foundation wants to bridge the information gap and bring the information to families when they need it the most.

To accomplish this mission, we plan to distribute information via brochures and fliers by working with
– Hospitals
– OBGYNs
– Other non-profits who work with grieving parents
– Funeral homes
– Cemeteries
– And other organizations that interact with grieving parents.

The brochures and fliers will direct grieving families to the Ari Foss Foundation’s website where they can receive the information and resources they need. (if your organization provides financial resources to help grieving families, please contact us, so we can get you listed)

We are actively developing Mission One.

Mission Two

It is official!!!!!  The Ari Foss Foundation will be working with the Palliative Care Program at MUSC to pay funeral or cremation expenses for families that have lost their child due to stillbirth. 

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