PLAN BEFORE THE VOTE: BILLOW SAYS OPPOSITION MOVES REACH MEMBERS THIS WEEK

Nathanael Billow, an Ohio funeral director whose family has belonged to Selected for six generations, is leading the opposition to the Selected–NFDA merger. He says members will see the opposition's plan before ballots open Thursday, running on the members-only discussion board and email list where the campaign has communicated all along. Selected counts almost 400 member firms in the United States and Canada, and Billow detailed the campaign in a 45-minute telephone interview with Obitley on Sept. 22.

That reverses the sequence Obitley reported earlier this month, when the ballot was set to open with no opposition plan on the record. Members will now have both in hand before voting begins.

The plan has two parts, Billow said, and the first addresses why members leave. By his account, roughly 70 percent of the attrition Selected has experienced over the past 20 years comes from long-time members concluding that the membership costs more than it returns, so the plan calls for reworking benefits, the cadence of meetings and programs, and content aimed at the modern independent funeral director. The second part addresses spending. Billow said the association's tax filings show salaries alone consume nearly half of its revenue, and he described the fix in a phrase he said is shared among the membership: go in with a hatchet, then go in with a scalpel.

The path to this week began Sept. 11, when Selected's chairman posted a message on the association's member forum that Billow read as a challenge: present the board a plan, if it is worth its weight, and otherwise do not complain. Billow answered on the forum that same day, offering a group of members willing to serve and help build an alternative. The chairman replied privately the next day, Billow said, asking for an official business plan the board could evaluate, and Billow submitted one on Sept. 13. The board has not responded in the 10 days since, he said.

The opposition sent Selected a formal demand letter on Sept. 14, addressed to Selected's chairman and to its chief executive, Billow said. The letter demands the release of the association's own financial records: the financial statements, staff detail and spending data members say they need to finish the opposition plan, and which he said the board has shared only at a 10,000-foot view. It carries a courtesy deadline of Oct. 2. The scope of those records will determine which route the opposition takes: asked whether his plan might include a new association or a management-company structure, he said it could, but that the answer depends on that granular spending data.

Selected's ballot opens Sept. 24 and closes Oct. 8, administered by Legacy Professionals, a Chicago-area election firm, with one vote per North American member firm. Selected's media contact, Mike Shefky of TRG Marketing, confirmed in writing on Sept. 11 that the vote needs only a simple majority of those voting. NFDA members face a different test on their own side of the deal: a two-thirds threshold, weighted by firm, under the bylaw amendments packaged with the merger.

Billow said the bylaws leave members little recourse in ordinary times, telling Obitley the membership has "zero power the way our bylaws are written" and that authority rests with the board and the executive director. But he pointed to one lever that outlasts a yes vote: a special meeting, announced 30 days in advance, at which the members can vote to replace the board and elect new directors. "Even if the vote passes by some chance, the members will still have the opportunity to replace the board and pull out," he said, describing a window while the merger's definitive agreements are still being executed.

He predicted departures regardless of the outcome: a number of member firms will terminate or decline to renew their dues at year's end, he said, and if the vote passes, cancellations would come immediately and in volume.

The public silence around the campaign is not quiet, Billow said. Members are professionals who do not want to air disputes in public, so the organizing happens on the internal platform rather than social media.

He said he welcomed the interview because opponents of the merger have not had a voice in the press comparable to what the leadership of both associations has had. The executive directors, Selected's Robert Paterkiewicz and NFDA's Christine Pepper, each sat for long-form question-and-answer interviews in American Funeral Director magazine in late August making the case for the deal. Billow has had no such platform, he said.

Much of the interview centered on secrecy. Billow said Selected has seated board members who are employees of member firms with no ownership stake, and who in some cases are not funeral directors at all. There are no direct elections for those seats, he said; prospective directors are screened in a process he described as unknown to the membership. He pointed to recent appointments as evidence, including a director seated in 2023 who had attended no Selected meetings in the prior 10 years, and a current board member who joined the association in 2025 and took a seat in 2026. The makeup of the board bears directly on the merger question, because the board is the body members would have to replace.

What is at stake, in Billow's telling, is the association's reason for existing. "It's an association for family-owned funeral homes who all agree to abide by a code of ethics," he said. "They agree to do what's right for the consumer, and they all pledge themselves to elevate standards of care and standards of service in the independent profession. That's what Selected's about." How the NFDA proposal's structure would keep Selected from changing is, he said, the biggest question that has not been answered, and members were told those details would be worked out after the vote.

Obitley will update this story when the plan is released.

Sources: Interview: Nathanael Billow, executive vice president, The Billow Co. (Akron, Ohio), telephone interview with Obitley, Sept. 22, 2026, recorded with permission; transcript on file. Ballot mechanics: email from Mike Shefky, TRG Marketing, to Obitley, Sept. 11, 2026; Obitley, "Not Two-Thirds: Selected's CEO Says Merger Vote Needs Only a Simple Majority," Sept. 11, 2026; Obitley, "Vote First, Plan Later: Selected's Ballot Opens Before the Opposition's Plan," Sept. 2026; NFDA bylaw amendments effective Sept. 1, 2025 (Art. XIII); American Funeral Director, executive-director question-and-answer features, late August 2026.