Recognizing Excellence in Funeral Service Innovation

What is the best new product of 2025?

Every year, NFDA grants its “Innovation Award” to the supplier that introduces the best new product/service since last year’s convention. The 2025 Innovation Award winner will be announced on Monday, October 27, 2025, in Chicago, IL.

Last year's winner was announced on Monday, October 21, 2024, in New Orleans, LA.

How does it work?

All exhibitors contracted for the 2025 NFDA International Convention & Expo are eligible to submit their best product/service that has been introduced commercially since January 1, 2025.

The top three finalists are independently selected by a panel of esteemed judges.

This year's Innovation Award is sponsored by ASD Innovation Award 2024 Sponsor

2024 Innovation Award Participants

Thank you to our Innovation Award Participants:

  • Afterword
  • Air Esscentials, Inc
  • b-ecologic
  • Better Place Forests
  • Bio-Response Solutions
  • Box of Comfort
  • Cadence
  • Chptr
  • Clear Digital
  • Foveo Memorial - The Funeral Streaming Company
  • Funeral & Cremation Marketing
  • Guided by Grief
  • Keith Merrick Company
  • Lamp Urns
  • Life's QR
  • NewSpring Church
  • OPTIKA Scenicworks, Inc
  • Tribute Technology
  • Trigard
  • Tukios

Thank you to our 2024 Judges

Thank you to our distinguished panel of judges:

  • Benny Capaul - Funeral Director, Death Consultant, Death Doula, Capaul Funeral Home
  • Brian Van Heck - Director of Operations, Posey Funeral Directors
  • Katey Houston - Director of Family Care, Return Home
  • Kevin Smith - Manager, Berceuse Funeral and Cremation Traditions
  • Matt Bailey - Funeral Director & President, Bailey Family Funeral Homes
  • Mike Burns - Dean of Faculty & Students, Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science
  • Timothy McLoone - Owner, Funeral Director, William R. May Funeral Home,Inc
  • Valerie Janusz - Manager, Funeral Director, Prasser-Kleczka Funeral Home
  • Welton Hong - Founder & CEO, Ring Ring Marketing

1Director

1Director is the first-of-its-kind software that includes case management, personalized websites, real-time family collaboration, stationery design, memorial video creation, calendar coordination, online arrangements, custom documents, payments and accounting, and so much more, all in one seamless platform.Case management with 1Director streamlines the planning process by allowing funeral directors to collect case details, execute online arrangements, e-sign documents, and process payments in one simple experience. Owners and staff stay organized by tracking and assigning tasks, making case notes, and creating events in a cloud-based, always up-to-date calendar.

2023 Winner

Bluewater Voyage

Bluewater Voyage offers something completely new for cremated remains. The Bluewater Voyage Buoy has given the public an alternative means of scattering ashes at sea. Once the ashes are packed inside the vessel,  Bluewater Voyage will deploy this into the gulf-stream for a one year long adventure. Sensors aboard the Voyager Buoy connect with our online Portal. Family and friends are able to track their loved one across every swell and wave.  Monitoring details like temperature, current, and bearing will be recorded for the family to see at the current point and time of the buoys location. Once the buoy is deployed, one of three things will happen during the adventure.

  1. At any given point during the trip the family can scuttle,(sink) the buoy to become a permanent grave marker in the ocean.
  2. If the buoy gets within less than 100ft of water, it will be scuttled to keep from having it wash up on shore.
  3. At the 365.5 day mark the buoy will be scuttled to become a permanent grave marker on the ocean floor.

2022 Winner

Everything After!

Everything After was built to completely shift how families and funeral homes experience aftercare. Research shows that families universally face three needs after a loss: planning a funeral, navigating acute grief, and juggling the logistics of settling an estate.  Funeral homes are experts at meeting the first of these needs, but families are being vastly underserved when it comes to the other two—and that’s what Everything After was built to change, by creating an estate platform and a grief platform, the two working in tandem to serve families.

2021 Winner

Passare

Passare® users wanted a way to streamline the death certificate process for every case, so the Passare team worked to develop and release the first-ever integration with a state’s electronic death registration system.

2019 Winner

Carved In Memory

We take the love note from a late husband, a birthday card from a sibling or grandma's famous pie recipe and cut them out of wood and turn them into an exact replica piece of art. Each piece is carved into a 3-D wood sign that families can cherish forever. 

2018 Winner

ASD - Answering Service for Directors

Web Form Watchdog
ASD Web Form Watchdog
In today’s busy world, it is easy to miss a call and even easier to overlook an email. This is just human nature. ASD’s Web Form Watchdog is the only tool that gives funeral homes the ability to protect this open line of communication. With this feature, inquiries submitted through the firm’s Contact Us form automatically generate an alert within ASD’s notification system. This safety net ensures funeral home web queries are answered in a timely manner and are always sent to the designated on-call funeral director.

2017 Winner

ASD - Answering Service for Directors

Suicide - Telephone Operator Patch (STOP System)

When someone is feeling hopeless or alone, there is no telling who they might reach out to and in some cases they contact a funeral home. ASD created the Suicide - Telephone Operator Patch (STOP) System to give its staff a way to seamlessly connect with suicide hotline operators 24/7. By linking staff to suicide prevention operators, ASD can ensure these callers receive immediate counseling, guidance and support.

2016 Winner

Tukios

Custom Tribute Video Themes

Our Custom Theme functionality is original and unique in the fact that Tukios is the only memorial video software that offers it. This provides funeral directors that are using Tukios the ability to not only set themselves apart from their competition, but also allows them to provide a level of personalization unique to each family.

2015 Winner

ASD - Answering Service for Directors

MobileFH™

MobileFH™ is the first telecommunication solution that allows users to control their outgoing Caller ID without the need for an Internet connection. MobileFH™ uses a cellular connection rather than Wi-Fi to ensure calls are clear and free of audio issues. This critical difference is quite meaningful for funeral directors who must often discuss highly-sensitive subjects on their cell phones. The new technology introduced by MobileFH™ also allows funeral directors to record these calls for future reference, an added benefit that is not available using alternative methods.

2014 Winner

Frontrunner

Total Business Solution

The Total Business Solution is unlike anything seen on the market today in funeral service. As a licensed funeral director for over 30 years, CEO & founder of FrontRunner Professional knew all too well how often he had to enter the same deceased and family information and how much time and money that cost him as a funeral director. With the recent acquisition of the industry’s only web-based management solution, FrontRunner now offers the only completely web-based Total Business Solution where all of a firms website, management, marketing and memorialization needs are in one powerful single-data-entry solution.

2013 Winner

funeralOne

f1Connect Mobile Websites

The reason f1Connect mobile websites are so unique in the profession is that we’re the only truly mobile optimized website out there. Unlike most website providers, we didn’t just take the easy route by simply making our website templates viewable on a mobile phone. Why? Because what mobile users are looking for and how they interact with funeral home websites is completely different than desktop users.  That’s why we started from scratch and built our mobile websites from the ground-up.

2012 Winner

ASD - Answering Service for Directors

ASD Mobile

Can a mobile application transform how funeral professionals conduct business? When it functions as a two-way channel capable of transmitting and receiving information, it absolutely can. With break through push notification technology, ASD Mobile represents the next generation of mobile applications designed exclusively for funeral homes. First Calls and new messages are delivered through the app at extraordinary speed, surpassing text-messaging as the fastest communication method available. Unlike other funeral home apps, ASD Mobile allows for the bidirectional exchange of data. Using any Apple product, directors have one-touch access to send service or on-call information and can monitor all incoming telephone activity without being tethered to a physical location.

2011 Winner

Greene Valley Media Co.

FuneralScreen Digital Signage Solution

Greene Valley Media Companys "FuneralScreen" is the first digital signage solution available to funeral homes which utilizes cloud based computing technology. Cloud computing allows funeral home staff to update content on digital signs from any computer or mobile device with internet access. Users have the ability to assign and schedule content to individual screens. Digital announcements, memorial tributes, weather, websites are just a few of the type of content that can be displayed simutaneously.

2010 Winner

Argent International

ThanoSeal

ThanoSeal is a pre-cut clear polyethylene tape to be used as a wound closure and sealer for needle sticks, carotid arteries, anywhere body fluids may leak. ThanoSeal tape will minimize time to prepare a body for showing or reduce embalming time, and avoids sewing with possible needle injuries to the embalmer, especially if our Sutureless Protocol is used. Most importantly, ThanoSeal will halt any leakage post embalming and this can provide tremendous “piece of mind” and obviously reduce further time and cost issues. The cost is 70% below other products and has far greater adhesion qualities.