I almost made a different reply, but deleted it in favor of giving you the benefit of the doubt. what does that post mean?
Non-profits still need revenue if they’re going to cover expenses. The non-profit status (at least in the US) just means that you’re going to use any profit for charitable causes rather than distributing earnings to shareholders. A church takes in a great deal of money in donations and uses it to cover expenses. It makes money, but it claims that any money it makes above and beyond what it needs for it’s own overhead, expansion and internal projects will be given away. The bishops don’t tally the take for the year, find a fat profit and sock it away in an Italian vault. Okay, bad example, but you get the point: non-profit does not mean it doesn’t earn money.
A cemetery takes in revenue as long as they have plots and services to sell, but once they’re full their revenue dries up, but their maintenance expenses remain. Whether they are non-profit or not, they still need to make money to cover expenses. So, is your point that it is weird that a cemetary would be privately owned rather than owned (and subsidized) by a church or municipality?
How do old cemetaries stay in business?
Ghost-power!
Not everywhere. Here (France) , burial plots are leased for 10 years, 30 years or “perpetuity”, which is actually, IIRC, only 100 years. The lease can be renewed (by your family) or not. If it is not, your remains can be dug out (and reburied in some collective grave, I suppose) and the plot reused. Which is exactly what happens in large towns cemetaries, except for graves (or cemetaries) which have some historical value. In little villages, your grave will probably remain undisturbed for a long time, even if your lease isn’t renewed.
And I believe that actually in most Paris cemetaries (and possibly in other cities), it’s not possible anymore to lease a plot for more than 30 years.
However, I don’t think there are any private cemetaries. The land belong to the city (or the “commune” in the countryside), and I don’t even think the cemetaries can be run by a private company acting as a subcontractor, though I could be wrong.
I work at a nonprofit, 150-year-old cemetery. At our place, we are able to reuse graves after 50 years provided that the land owner (the person who bought the space) or the relatives of the original land owner sign a Hold Harmless Agreement. Of course, this has only happened once in the five years I’ve been on staff, and the grave that was reused was over 100 years old, so you can imagine that there wasn’t much of a problem when the Superintendent brought in the backhoe. Now that most people use vaults or concrete boxes as outer burial containers for their caskets, though, I’m sure that we’ll have to abandon the reusing of graves in about 50 years.
How do we make money? We charge for our services, of course, but we rely on the kindness of donors to keep the place up and running. We do not accept any government money as we’ve found that those cemeteries that do tend to end up with more headaches than not. We do the fundraising. We write the grants to private foundations. We’re pretty well-known in the world of cemeteries, I guess, and we make some money by giving tours of the place.
Oh, and one more thing. We offer double depth burials (it is what it sounds like). It’s a very common practice and a lot of cemeteries do it.
In Louisiana, I’ve seen triple-and-quadruple depth burial cemeteries.
I was about to mention France. Having been to Les Catacombs in Paris, I was mortified (:dubious:) by the number of skeletal remains piled on top of each other in abandoned limestone mines as part of the Parisian attempt to deal with overflowing graveyards a century or two ago.