Reprinted with permission from The New York Times.

 Alfred Engelberg

       Vincent Laforet/ The New York Ti m e s              

Alfred Engelberg and other philanthropists helped change Plaza Jewish Community Chapel into a nonprofit funeral home.
 

The Metro Section
By STEPHANIE STROM
In some people's minds, there is not much difference between funeral home directors and used-car salesmen. "Funeral services have always gotten a bad rap," Charles S. Salomon, the funeral director at
Riverside Memorial Chapel in Manhattan, said with a sigh. "Nobody wants to be involved in
funerals. No one wants to talk about them. People don't want to be here."
But at least one funeral home, Plaza Jewish Community Chapel in Manhattan, actually has some fans. Howard F. Sharfstein is one; Plaza helped him bury his father, Sidney, in April.
"I can't say enough good about it," he said. 		 

Mr. Sharfstein knows his funerals. As a lawyer specializing in trusts and estates, he has more experience than most with the business of dispatching the dead, much of it negative, he said.


"One time, I had to pick out a coffin and I went to a place where they took me into a room and the least expensive coffin in it was $10,000," he said. "Only because I asked if they had anything less expensive was I shown a less expensive coffin.
If you didn't know to ask, you'd believe coffins cost $10,000 and up."

  

His father's entire funeral cost a little less than that, including transportation of the body to New York from Florida, cemetery charges, three shiny
black cars to ferry relatives to the burial site, and flowers.
Plaza is a nonprofit funeral home, one of just a handful nationwide not affiliated with a church, synagogue, burial society or religious organization.
In its first year as a nonprofit, Plaza dropped its prices by more than 20 percent and will lower them again this year, according to Harold Handler, a board member. And Plaza says it
hopes that prices will keep falling even as it
 
repays the philanthropists who helped underwrite its transformation into a nonprofit with $1.2 million in interest-free loans and renovates its funeral parlor on Amsterdam Avenue at 91st Street.
Funeral homes, once largely a mom-and-pop business, have become a big business, and Plaza's backers contend that the profit motive has corrupted the homes. They note that the nation's two largest funeral home operators, the Alderwoods Group, formerly the Loewen Group, and Service Corporation International, have both been targets of anti-trust actions by federal and state regulators concerned about rising prices.
"Just take casket selling," said Andrew Fier, Plaza's executive
director. "I was brought up knowing if you sold a casket for $50 more, well, that was $50 more you made, so you worked hard to get people to buy the most expensive caskets."
Mr. Fier's family once owned Riverside and Plaza, selling them in the 1980's to the Service Corporation, and he said curbing
the instinct to sell a customer a more expensive coffin or bigger flower arrangement was not easy.
"I had to really learn a whole new way of looking at the world as an executive of a non-profit," he said.

Mr. Fier and Plaza's directors say the chapel has little incentive to sell bereaved consumers more expensive coffins and add-on products and services. "The difference between a for-profit
and a not-for-profit is that the not-for-profit can look at the business as a service," said Alfred Engelberg, a lawyer turned philanthropist whose foundation put up a $250,000
interest-free loan to help buy Plaza. "They don't have to make
m o n e y. "

Mr. Spitzer found that the cost of a funeral at Riverside had doubled in the decade after the company bought it. Plaza must, of course, make enough money to cover its
expenses, which were about $1.3 million in 2001, according to
its tax returns. It did about 240 funerals in the year before Mr.
Engelberg and seven other philanthropists, the Jewish
Communal Fund and the UJA-Federation of New York put up
$2.7 million to buy it and turn it into a nonprofit. It performed 390 funerals last year, and Mr. Engelberg said he would like to see that increase to 500.
Directors of commercial funeral homes dispute the notion that nonprofits are cheaper. "They're not," said Sonny Levitt, president of Jewish Funeral Directors of America, a trade association.

But the numbers are in black and white. Plaza charges $3,335
for what is called a "basic" funeral, which includes transfer of the body locally, refrigeration, basic arrangements, supervision, use of the mortuary and the tahara, or ritual bathing, room. Riverside charges $4,235 for a similar funeral package.

Commercial competitors say that Plaza is hardly a blip on their radar.
"I really couldn't say if it's had any impact because I haven't
noticed," said Mr. Salomon, of Riverside.

But at the same time, the commercial funeral homes defend
their higher prices. "You get what you pay for," Mr. Salomon said. "They have five people on the payroll; we have 50. So if we get $5,000 for a funeral, they should get $500."

Though funeral directors at conventional mortuaries contend that Plaza poses no challenge to them, they have also complained that it has unfair competitive advantages.

"The difference between a for-profit and a not-for-profit is that the not-for-profit can look at the business as a service," said Plaza's president, Alfred Engelberg.


For instance, Plaza described a letter from Riverside's lawyers to the New York State Health Department, which regulates funeral businesses. The letter complained that Plaza violated
public health law by using Debby Hirshman, executive director of the Jewish Community Center, in its radio advertising.
The law forbids anyone other than a licensed and registered funeral director or undertaker from being named in a "public or private announcement or advertisement."
Plaza said that Ms. Hirshman had never presented herself as
a funeral director and that it was puzzled by the complaint because there were no similar complaints about Plaza ads featuring Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein of Central Synagogue and Rabbi David H. Lincoln of Park Avenue Synagogue.
M r. Salomon of Riverside declined to comment on the issue. According to Mr. Engelberg, the Plaza investor and president of its board, marketing is one of the chapel's biggest problems.
"As soon as people say you're a nonprofit, some people will
say that's for poor people and I'm not a charity case," he said.
"But we're doing funerals for everyone. If you want an expensive
coffin, we'll sell it to you although we won't suggest it to you." But Mr. Fier, Plaza's executive director, is seeing Plaza's impact. "Riverside hasn't raised prices in two years," he said.
"That shows they've noticed us."