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October 30, 2009
Leave an online legacy
Bcelebrated receives attention in Vancouver.
BAILA LAZARUS
You won't find many people sitting at home these days creating paper scrapbooks of their lives. Often, the cocktail napkins from a daughter's wedding, the invitation to a bar mitzvah or the award for public speaking end up in shoeboxes left to gather dust over the years. With the onset of digital photography, even photo albums seem too much trouble now.
How, then, to document the milestones of your life – to have a collection of memories to share with friends and family while you're alive and to leave as a legacy after death? And how do you let people know important information about your life after you have passed away? For example, would your relatives even know whom to contact or how to contact them? How would they access password-protected personal files that they may need to retrieve to manage your estate? Who would know you well enough to write your obituary? What if you had special messages you wanted to leave to specific people after your death?
Now, a new online option – Bcelebrated (bcelebrated.com) – enables people to do all this: record special moments in their lives, leave private information for family and friends and create their own obituaries and memorials.
"Bcelebrated allows you to define your own legacy and will save your loved ones from the grief of coping with the small details of your life that, perhaps, only you would know," said Debra Joy, chief executive officer of Bcelebrated.
To use the site, clients create password-protected pages to which they can upload messages, photos and even links to videos they find inspirational. You can enter a list of contacts that will be notified once the site is up and running, and that same list (or a different one) can also be automatically notified upon one's death. Those visiting the site can leave messages, make a donation to your favorite charity, send the grieving family a gift or link to a page created specifically for them.
Though founded by Joy and her husband, Mark Schwartz, who live in California, the business is getting a lot of attention in Vancouver. Joel Solomon, president and chief executive offer of Renewal Partners, a Vancouver-based investment firm, Nancy Bradshaw, co-founder of Canadian Business for Social Responsibility, and Robert Brown, a green developer, have teamed up with Joy to develop bcelebrated.com.
Solomon is well known in the Vancouver community for providing startup funding for businesses that incorporate social and environmental values. Several years ago, he was made "viscerally aware" of his own mortality when he was diagnosed with a potentially fatal genetic kidney disease and given only a couple of years to live. "Everyone in my family had died from it," he said in an interview with the Independent.
"It led to me thinking a lot about the reality of human existence," said Solomon. "It caused me to consider my life purpose from the end looking back. An exercise many people do very often."
Two years ago, Solomon was fortunate to have a kidney transplant, but he was left with the lessons of that near-death experience. When he heard about Joy's initiative, he saw it as a great venture.
"I've known Deb for many years. The idea that I could have a place where I could be supported in recording my journey is a wonderful business idea."
Solomon's role so far has been in supporting Joy with the funding and marketing of the business, as well as advising her on strategic partnerships. He sees Bcelebrated as a "well-done component for lots of other sites [such as estate planning and insurance] that don't have the time to build this kind of functionality."
Bcelebrated has a three-minute video tour that offers a step-by-step guide to setting up a personal legacy page. The site works on an annual fee of $19.95 and a lifetime membership of $99.95. It offers a free one-month trial period. The first 500 people to join Bcelebrated using the promo code "celebrate" will receive their first year free.
Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, painter and photographer. Her work can be seen at orchiddesigns.net.
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