In 2001, NATCCO started to seriously look into the funeral social enterprises. This was in response to the growing clamor among primary cooperative affiliates for NATCCO to study the possibilities of making funeral services available to their coop members at affordable rates.

This is the concept and the vision behind FONUS, a coop-owned and coop-managed funeral event planning and management enterprise.

Our Vision
For coops to provide funeral care that is affordable, dignified, and dynamically responsive to the current and emerging needs of Filipino families.

Our Goal
To establish strong, successful, sustainable and competitive funeral cooperatives throughout the country that will operate using one business concept, under one name, one brand and guided by one business operating system.

COOPS are community champions
Coops have a strong social responsibility to their members and to the community.  They provide services and empower people, especially the disadvantaged, to help themselves.  For many members, coops are already a way of life.  They believe that their coop will be there for them - from womb to tomb, from birth to death.  FONUS funeral enterprise completes the coop service loop!

Funeral Care is a natural business for COOPS

As community-based organizations, coops have strong local presence where decent, professional, affordable funeral service is lacking.  They also have a captured market - there is a clear need for funeral services given that coop members have an average age of 40 and an average family size of three to four.  Furthermore, most coops already offer mortuary aid or memorial insurance to their members, which links naturally with funeral care.

Most importantly, the unique dimension of Philippine coop culture, where members feel they are part of one big family, will enable coops to go beyond the delivery of funeral care. "Professional service with a heart" could be the special niche that coops, by virtue of who they are and what they stand for, can carve for themselves in the funeral services industry.

How can your COOP get started?
NATCCO has developed the business standards of FONUS and we have the expertise to help your coop set up the funeral care services.

We offer you:

•  Standards and procedures that are market responsive and have been benchmarked with the best practices in the industry.
•  Business techniques and systems.
•  Specialized personnel recruitment and training program.
•  Ready-made structural plans and advertising signs that can be easily customized.
• Operations, marketing and promotions manual that coop partners can use and adopt.

Maximize the advantages of being part of the NATCCO network.  Expand the services of your coop!

After the initial formation stage of setting up FONUS funeral cooperatives throughout the country, the goal is to move towards a consolidation stage, that is to establish an integration chain of strong and sustainable funeral cooperatives.

As part of the integrated chain, coops will be able to take full advantage of economies of scale.  Being part of the network will give your coop the opportunity to solve common problems together and learn from the experiences of their peers - what worked and what did not work, what innovations were made and what improvements and developments to undertake.