About us
Kick the bucket. Pass on. Meet your maker. Bite the dust. Didn't make it. Shuffle off this mortal coil.
There are more euphemisms for "dead" than almost any other word in the English language. We avoid talking about death like naming it invites death to our doorstep.
Then someone we love dies.
We have no choice but to face it. Name it. And on top of that, we need to plan something, but with no clear idea what our options are.
The Endings Company is a memorial planning marketplace. We show you your options—venues, service providers, memorial planners—and help you find the right places and people to work with.
We help you navigate everything. Where it happens. How it feels. What people eat. What's playing. Right now or in a year. A memorial service or one hell of a party. Whatever feels right for your person and the people who loved them.
In the process, we're building stories and resources that make death a little easier to plan for—and maybe a little easier to talk about. Because you can’t separate planning a memorial from grieving. And you and your person deserve something more personal than just the standard options.
A WELCOME LETTER FROM THE OWNER
I’m Sarah Kellogg Neff. Owner of The Endings Company.
We’re building EndCo to connect great providers across the death and dying space with the grieving, emotionally spent people who need them. In the process, we hope to help the hard conversations come a little easier, too.
I spent four years scaling up one of the largest maternal health providers in the country. I got to help hundreds of thousands of families get the care they deserved during a stressful, high-stakes life moment: Feeding a newborn. I also got to help thousands of female entrepreneurs scale their private practices.
As I turned my gaze from the beginning of life to the end of life, I saw the ways these major life milestones rhyme. The messy, stigmatized moments that make people flinch. The expensive, pesky silence about the things that matter most.
I’ve also lived this life moment. I buried both of my parents in my 20s. I knew a traditional funeral wasn’t right for them or for all of us who wanted to honor them. I knew where I wanted to host their memorials, and I remember how weird I felt having to call and ask if the venue “did memorials.” (They did, they just felt weird publicizing it.)
So I see the great small businesses quietly showing up for grieving families who ask for help memorializing a loved one. It is the privilege of my career to break down that stigma, so that families get what they need and small businesses grow.
Because with AI disruption flooding our newsfeeds, memorable IRL events have never been more meaningful. And as mass layoffs pummel our communities, there’s never been a better time to enable small businesses to chart their own paths.
We’ll never make hard things easy. But we can make hard things a little easier—and that can make all the difference.
Sarah Kellogg Neff
Owner
Sarah Kellogg Neff is the owner of The Endings Company, a marketplace connecting families navigating loss with vetted memorial planning vendors and venues. Before EndCo, Sarah was CEO of The Lactation Network, scaling it to the largest provider of lactation care in the country. She holds a JD from Indiana University, a master's degree from the London School of Economics, and a BA from the University of Michigan. She spent her early career eyeing a path toward public service before moving into marketing and strategy leadership roles. She lives in Chicago with her husband and rescue pup Arlo.