A respectful obituary draft in minutes — published to the family’s page, your website, social, and the local paper.
You're drafting obituaries between arrangements. The local paper runs thinner. Families want updates faster than you can mail them. Holdfast is the drafting and publishing tool built for the way independent funeral homes actually work.
- Citations to the sources used
- Drafted in your voice — not a template
- Published to the channels you already use
From the arrangement sheet
Survived by wife Margaret, sons Daniel and Joseph; U.S. Army 1968–70; retired from Bethlehem Steel. Funeral Saturday 11 a.m., St. Mark's.
Holdfast draft
Eugene R. Whitcomb, 1947–2026
Eugene R. Whitcomb, 78, of Bethlehem, passed away peacefully on Tuesday. Born to the late Harold and Florence Whitcomb, he served in the U.S. Army from 1968 to 1970 and retired after 38 years at Bethlehem Steel…
What Holdfast does
One place for the work between the first call and the service.
Draft an obituary.
From a few notes you already have on the arrangement sheet — survivors, military, church, hobbies, employer — Holdfast drafts a respectful obituary in your firm’s voice. Edit before anything is published.
Approve, then publish.
One approval sends the obituary to the family’s private page on your website, your funeral home’s site, your social channels, and the local paper’s online submission. You choose which channels for each family.
Family sees one correct version.
No email chains, no photocopies at the arrangement conference, no second cousin reposting the wrong draft on Facebook. The family and the community see the same obituary, on every channel, as you approved it.
Why now, why this
Built for the people who serve families, not for the platform economy.
Families are scattering. Attendance is down. The local paper runs thinner than it did a decade ago. Directors spend more time on admin than on arranging — and the tools built for the rest of small business were never designed for this work.
The people who serve families in their darkest hours deserve a tool built specifically for them. Not a generic CRM. Not a chatbot in front of a family member. Not a funnel.
Holdfast is an obituary drafting and publishing tool, made by a small team that has spent time with independent funeral directors. It does the one job well, and stays out of the way of the other twelve jobs you do today.
Who we are
A small team, building carefully.
Holdfast is a small team between customer interviews and a private alpha. We've spent the past several months sitting in arrangement conferences (with permission), reading state funeral directors association newsletters, and trying to write for the register a firm uses to honor its families — not for a SaaS landing page.
If you'd like to talk with us directly — to push back, to suggest a feature, to tell us where we've gotten the tone wrong — email holdfast-4-2@polsia.app. A founder reads every message and replies within a few days.
Holdfast is a Phase 0 effort. We're not yet ready to charge. We're ready to listen.
Frequently asked
The questions a director asks in the first call.
If something here doesn't answer it, email holdfast-4-2@polsia.app.
Join the waitlist
We'll email when directors in your area can join.
A one-line note from you is enough. We'll only write when we have something useful to share — never a drip, never a sales-y newsletter.
Prefer email? Write us directly at holdfast-4-2@polsia.app.