Mostly administrative stuff.
First, maintenance will resume once the weather clears.
Second, I am looking into getting a 501(c)13 setup, which is an IRS-recognized non-profit cemetery association. Obviously we don’t charge for our labor, but maintenance on the cemetery cost me $279 last year, with roughly a third of that being gasoline, a third being meals, and a third being materials (string, flags, grave markers, etc). I don’t have the estimates for what costs my brother and our friend Dave incurred.
I purchased a chainsaw and a weed eater for maintaining the cemetery in 2018 as well, but I did not factor in the cost of equipment purchased since I get to own the equipment.
I am guessing that setting up the 501(3)13 will probably cost a few hundred dollars, but I don’t have a real estimate. In order to comply with IRS guidelines for non-profits (as I understand it) we will need to elect officers, hold periodic meetings, and keep records. It sounds like kind of a pain, but I think this is what will be necessary for us to keep the cemetery preserved and maintained after we (the current maintainers) are no longer able to take care of it.
Third, I have been researching cemetery management software for almost a year. Most software packages are fairly expensive. At least I assume so by the fact that most vendors won’t tell you how much the software actually costs–you have to contact them for a quote. I have found a plugin for WordPress (the blogging platform for this website) and it is only around $100, and it looks fairly promising.
Fourth, I would like to get decent aerial shots of the cemetery to assist with the mapping layout. I have been pricing new and used camera drones for a while, but I hate to buy something that I won’t really have much use for once I have the shots. If you know someone with a drone that has a high-res camera that would like to take the shots for us, pleas let me know.
Fifth, and maybe the easiest item on the list, I want to get a sign made to affix to the fence.
Finally, and this is more of a wish-list item than a total necessity, I would like to get a ground-penetrating-radar scan of the cemetery. The fact is we honestly don’t know how many bodies are buried and exactly where, and it would be nice to know for sure.