business case 9 min read

By TerraCare

Centralized NOR Referral Models for Funeral Directors: What They Mean for Your Business

Several centralized NOR providers now operate licensed soil transformation facilities across multiple states, including East Coast locations in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. These providers accept referrals from funeral homes and have developed partnerships with referring funeral homes in various markets. But here is the operative question for any funeral director evaluating them: the centralized provider is the licensed funeral home of record for the NOR service. They control the vessel, the transformation process, the timeline communication with the family, and the disposition of the soil. Your funeral home refers the family out — and the family relationship, the NOR service revenue, and the ongoing connection follow. This article examines what that model means for funeral home operators who are considering whether a centralized referral arrangement offers a workable B2B structure, or whether an on-site, decentralized ownership model serves their business interests better.

Do centralized NOR providers offer a real B2B partner program for funeral directors, or are they just referral arrangements?

Centralized NOR providers are referral arrangements, not B2B partner programs. The centralized provider holds the NOR operating license, performs the service, controls family communication, and captures the service revenue. The referring funeral home coordinates intake and transport and bills separately for ancillary services — it is not the NOR provider of record. Funeral directors who want to own the NOR service line need a decentralized model that puts equipment at their own facility.

  • In a centralized NOR referral arrangement, the centralized provider — not the funeral home — is the licensed NOR provider of record.
  • The referring funeral home's involvement ends at transport; all family touchpoints, service revenue, and future relationship value flow to the centralized provider.
  • Centralized NOR providers generally do not publish structured B2B programs with disclosed revenue-sharing or equipment-installation terms for independent funeral homes.
  • Under the decentralized model (TerraCare), the funeral home owns the equipment, performs the service, captures the full revenue, and retains the family relationship throughout.
  • Funeral homes that refer NOR cases to centralized providers risk that families will return to the centralized provider — not the referring funeral home — for future needs.
  • The core question for any funeral director: do you want to be the NOR provider in your market, or a distribution channel for someone else's service?

What Is the Centralized NOR Referral Model?

Centralized NOR providers describe themselves as online or direct-to-consumer funeral homes with licensed establishments across multiple states. Some operate facilities in Washington, California, Nevada, Oregon, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with service areas extending further through transport coordination.

The consumer-facing model is straightforward: families contact the centralized provider directly, arrange the NOR service, and receive soil back after approximately 45 days. These providers employ their own licensed funeral directors, handle all regulatory filings, coordinate transportation, and manage every stage of the process.

Some centralized providers have established tiered pricing for families who arrive through a referring funeral home, typically at a lower rate than the direct-to-consumer price. Under this model, the referring funeral home charges its own fees separately for death certificate filing, transportation coordination, and similar services — but the centralized provider handles everything downstream.

That structure is not a B2B partner program in the way most funeral home operators use that term. Centralized NOR providers do not sell equipment, license a process, or enable a funeral home to perform NOR on-site. Their partnership with traditional funeral homes is a referral relationship. The funeral home sends the family. The centralized provider does the work.

Do Centralized NOR Providers Have Formal Partner Programs for Funeral Homes?

Based on available public information as of April 2026, centralized NOR providers generally do not publish dedicated B2B partner program pages with disclosed revenue-sharing structures for funeral homes. The evidence of funeral home partnerships comes primarily from referral arrangements in which funeral homes send families to these providers. Some centralized providers have partnered with large funeral home chains in the Pacific Northwest, with those chains referring families to the centralized facility for NOR services.

What centralized providers have not done — based on publicly available information — is launch published B2B programs that allow funeral homes to add NOR as an owned service line. The model remains: the centralized provider is the NOR provider. Funeral homes can send families to them.

This matters for funeral directors in a specific way. Large funeral home chains can negotiate favorable referral terms with centralized providers. Independent funeral homes considering a referral relationship are working with less leverage, and more importantly, are measuring the value of a referral arrangement against the alternative — which is owning the process entirely.

Who Owns the Body, Who Owns the Family, and Who Captures the Revenue?

These are the three questions every funeral home operator should ask before entering any NOR arrangement. They are also the questions that most clearly reveal the structural difference between a centralized referral model and a decentralized ownership model. For a deeper look at how these models compare across the NOR industry, see the centralized vs. decentralized terramation programs explainer.

Under a centralized referral arrangement:

  • The body transfers to the centralized provider’s custody. Their funeral directors and facility personnel manage the process.
  • The family’s primary service experience — the 45-day transformation, the status updates, the soil retrieval — is managed by the centralized provider, not by the referring funeral home.
  • The centralized provider captures the NOR service fee. The referring funeral home bills separately for ancillary coordination services, but the main service — the one the family chose — belongs to the centralized provider.
  • When the family has a second death care need in the future, they may call the centralized provider, not the funeral home that referred them.

Under a decentralized on-site ownership model:

  • The body remains in the funeral home’s facility, in the funeral home’s equipment.
  • The family’s service relationship is with the funeral home. The funeral home’s staff guides them through the process.
  • The NOR service revenue is captured by the funeral home.
  • The family’s next call, and the call after that, goes back to the funeral home.

This is not a subtle distinction. It is the difference between being a referral source and being a service provider. Funeral homes that have spent decades building family relationships and community trust need to consider what it means to hand those families to a centralized provider — even a well-operated, legitimate one — for the disposition service the family specifically chose.

Where Do Centralized NOR Providers Currently Operate?

Some centralized NOR providers serve families across more than a dozen states, including multiple East Coast markets, through licensed facilities or transport coordination.

Fourteen states have now enacted NOR legislation: Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, California, New York, Nevada, Arizona, Maryland, Delaware, Minnesota, Maine, Georgia, and New Jersey. Of those, California, New York, and New Jersey are legal but not yet operational. Centralized providers’ operational footprints vary — some cover East Coast markets, while others are primarily Washington State-based. Funeral homes in states not covered by a centralized provider’s footprint may still be asked to facilitate transport to out-of-state facilities.

Even where a centralized provider’s geographic reach extends to a funeral home’s market, the structural consideration remains: a funeral home that refers a family to a centralized provider is still handing the service relationship to that provider. The family’s NOR experience is managed at the centralized facility — not by the referring funeral home. The geographic problem may be minimal, but the ownership question remains.

What Does the Referral Model Cost Funeral Homes in the Long Run?

The per-case economics of referring to a centralized NOR provider versus owning an on-site NOR program deserve careful analysis. A funeral home using a centralized referral structure captures fees for death certificate filing, transportation coordination, and similar ancillary services. The NOR service fee — the primary item on the invoice — belongs to the centralized provider.

For funeral homes seeking a genuine ROI analysis comparing NOR ownership models, including realistic break-even timelines for on-site equipment programs, the ROI analysis for funeral home NOR programs provides a full framework.

The short version: a funeral home that owns its NOR process captures the full service revenue on every case. A funeral home that refers out captures a fraction of what the family spent on the disposition they chose. At volume, that gap compounds significantly. More importantly, the family relationship — the most durable asset a funeral home owns — either deepens through direct service or transfers to the centralized provider.

How Does TerraCare’s Decentralized Model Compare?

TerraCare Partners operates a decentralized model. Rather than building centralized facilities and accepting referrals, TerraCare installs NOR equipment at the funeral home’s own facility. The funeral home owns the equipment, performs the NOR service, and retains the family relationship. TerraCare provides the training, compliance support, and ongoing operational backing — but the service itself is delivered by the funeral home’s staff, in the funeral home’s space, under the funeral home’s brand.

This structural difference shows up in four ways that matter to funeral home operators:

  1. Revenue capture: The funeral home bills the family for the NOR service at the funeral home’s rate. There is no NOR service fee going to a third-party provider.
  2. Family relationship: The family’s primary point of contact throughout the process is the funeral home. The relationship continues after the service concludes.
  3. Geographic independence: The funeral home does not depend on a centralized facility’s geographic footprint. The service is delivered locally.
  4. Brand equity: Every NOR case the funeral home performs builds the funeral home’s reputation as a green burial provider in its community.

For a direct comparison of how centralized and decentralized NOR models perform against each other across these dimensions, see decentralized vs. centralized terramation and centralized vs. decentralized terramation programs.

What Is the Right Question Before Choosing Any NOR Arrangement?

Centralized NOR providers are legitimate, operationally established operators that have demonstrated their soil transformation process works at scale. Funeral home operators should evaluate them carefully, not carelessly dismiss them.

What funeral home operators should evaluate carefully is whether a referral arrangement — however well-intentioned — serves the funeral home’s long-term interests. The NOR market is growing because families want it. The 63.4% national cremation rate (NFDA 2025 Cremation & Burial Report) reflects a decades-long shift away from traditional burial. NOR represents the next stage of that shift: families who want the environmental ethos of cremation but something more restorative than ash. Every funeral home in a legal NOR state will face this request with increasing frequency.

The question is not whether to offer NOR. It is whether to own the offering or refer it out. A funeral home that refers families to a centralized provider has answered that question in a way that benefits the centralized provider. A funeral home that installs on-site NOR equipment and delivers the service directly has answered it in a way that benefits the funeral home, the family, and the community.

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Sources

  1. Service Corporation International — Investor News. Seattle Funeral Homes Begin Offering Human Composting (May 17, 2023). https://investors.sci-corp.com/2023-05-17-Seattle-Funeral-Homes-Begin-Offering-Human-Composting
  2. National Funeral Directors Association — Statistics. 2025 Cremation and Burial Report (63.4% national cremation rate). https://nfda.org/news/statistics
  3. TerraCare Partners — Partner Program. https://www.thenaturalfuneral.com/terracarepartnerprogram/
  4. Washington State Legislature — WAC 246-500, Natural Organic Reduction. https://app.leg.wa.gov/wac/default.aspx?cite=246-500
  5. CANA — Cremation Association of North America, NOR Resources. https://www.cremationassociation.org