Who runs this site and why

My name is Dan Swenson. I am a data nerd who is also a Minnesota workers' compensation attorney and a city council member. Public information should not be hard to use, so I build this network of sites as a hobby: I pull scattered public records out of PDFs and government databases and turn them into tools regular people can actually use. I do not use these sites to find legal clients, except for MN Comp Buddy which is my actual day job. The tools are free. The sites pay for their own hosting through clearly disclosed referral links and a few optional paid guides.

This site is independent: not a funeral home, not a directory that takes listing fees, and not affiliated with any government agency.

This site exists because funeral decisions happen at the worst possible moment to make decisions. Families choose a funeral home in hours, under grief, usually for the first time, and usually without knowing that federal law gives them a right to itemized prices or that Minnesota licenses and inspects every funeral establishment. The information is all public. It is just not gathered anywhere calm.

So this site does three things. It lists every funeral establishment licensed by the Minnesota Department of Health, from the state's own records, with no ads and no paid placement. It explains your rights under the funeral rules. And it offers a checklist for the first days, because most of what feels urgent that week is not.

What this site will never do

• It will never contact a grieving family. Not by email, not by phone, not by anything. Every conversation this site is part of begins with you.
• It will never take money from funeral homes: no advertising, no placement, no ranking, no way to look better here than the state's records show.
• It will never sell or share your information. The site works without giving us any.

The honest disclosure

How this site pays for itself is disclosed where it happens: one printable binder is sold as a paid PDF, and some retailer links on the buying-guide pages may be referral links that pay this site a small commission. Those retailers are named because buying direct saves families real money against the selection room; a referral fee never changes the price you pay, and no retailer pays to appear here. Separately, one page describes when a death may involve legal rights, and that page names the attorney who receives a note if you choose to send one, because the rules that govern lawyer advertising require it. The checklist, the directory, and the rights pages carry no forms and ask you for nothing.

If something on this site is wrong, or a license record looks off, we want to know: dan@mnbuddynetwork.com.