The mother of a good friend of ours passed away and the viewing is tonight (we just found out yesterday evening)They asked in the obituary that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to particular organization.


My questions is, how does the family know that we have made such a donation? Do we say something or does the organization receiving the donation tell the family?

This is the first time that we will be doing this, as we normally send flowers, however, the last time we sent flowers we spent a LOT of money on them and I was actually embarrassed about how small the arrangement was when I saw it.

The organization will let the family know that a donation has been made by you. They do not normally give the dollar amount.

Any time I have donated in lieu of flowers the organization not only responds to the sender but also a nice card/letter to the recipient of the deceased. I have never seen a dollar amount given.

I was visiting a friend when he received one of those letters - it was just a list of the donors. You'd probably want to let the organization know that you were donating in memory of so-and-so, so that your name gets on that letter.

The exception to this was a home-grown charity. My 2nd mom's charity program was to make sure every baby born at their country hospital went home with a book. When she died, her husband took over the fund. So he saw the checks himself.