Q: The nonprofit that we are talking about today is the Austin Memorial and Burial Information Society. Roger Erickson is the president. Amy Prascack is on the board. Good to have both of you here. Let's talk about, first of all, Roger, the services that you provide. What can you do for people?

ERICKSON: Well first, we are an information society. We help people to be informed of their choices, to realize what they can do and not telling them what they should do. We work with people who are going to be using funeral homes, but we don't actually recommend any funeral homes or discourage any. We help people to know what prices are so; we have a price survey. We do it for all of the funeral homes in the area and people can compare. A lot of people don't like to compare, but it is important to do. Then we help people with advanced directives, so they are prepared with those paperwork needs that people have at their time of death.

Q: Amy, we are talking about a situation where people are grieving and having to deal with funeral arrangements, sometimes unexpectedly, but we have to remember this is also a consumer issue too, right?

PRASCACK: Right, and that's where the price survey comes in really handy that people can look at the prices and make some decisions and have that information in advance. Ideally, people would plan well ahead of the need and that's what we encourage an AMBIS.

Q: I noticed, for example, in some of the literature that you have put together, you have ideas of what types of funeral arrangements are possible. Some are different than others and have different prices. Give us an idea of an average funeral. What are we talking about?

PRASCACK: Nationally, the average is about $7,000, so you can see it's a significant outlay. Here in Austin, a full-service funeral might range from $4,000 to $10,000.

Q: So you actually have lists of like this is maybe some standard prices for different places?

PRASCACK: Right. All of the funeral homes and crematoria in the Austin area are on our price survey and we have sample services. So, if you have one type of funeral or you can have a cremation or you can add on different services and we give you an idea of what those prices are.

Q: It's a topic that is difficult to talk about. People don't like to talk about death. You've seen this really help lots of families and you would like others to get involved. How can people get involved with your organization?

ERICKSON: Well, they can always give us a call at AMBIS or go online to FCAAMBIS.org. If they get the information, we can then tell them what it is that might help them out, again, such as the price survey or that they can do a lot of things themselves if they want to, but some people don't. I did this. I was my own funeral director thanks to AMBIS. It saved me $10,000. We have other people that just say, hey, this is a place where you can go and get a service that might not cost as much. We don't care where they go, but to know they have choices that they can make.