Sympathy gift calculator

Methodology

This tool runs the Kindhow Scale, version 1.0, in its baseline-and-adjustments form. What is different here is what the baseline is made of. Every other gift tool on this site starts from a published figure for the occasion — The Knot’s wedding tiers, U.S. News’ graduation band. Nobody publishes an average sympathy gift, because nobody surveys mourners. So the baseline is a price list instead.

The formula

what to give when someone has died:

  what an arrangement would cost   the overlap of three published
                                   florist price guides       sourced
                                     a plant        $40-90
                                     a basket       $75-150
                                     a wreath       $100-250
                                     a standing spray $150-300
                                     a casket spray $200-500

  + where you sit in that range    0% to 100% of it            judgment
  + where the funeral is           BEA regional price parity   judgment
  + you cannot be there            $25                        judgment
  + food for the house             $50                        judgment

  flowers, when the notice          $0   sourced — and the money
  asked for donations                    moves to the charity
  cash in an envelope               $0   sourced — ordinarily not sent
  a donation of $250+             $0   sourced — get the letter
  money to a named family           $0   sourced — not deductible

  ─────────────
  ÷ however many of you are giving
  = never below $25, rounded to a giveable amount
    — or to a multiple of 18, chai, where that is the custom

Two authorities, no shared history, one unit — sourced

The Emily Post Institute, on what to give when a notice asks for donations instead of flowers: “Consider giving at least what you would have spent on a flower arrangement.”

Chabad.org, answering a reader asking why nobody puts flowers on a Jewish grave: “If you want to honor your grandmother, take the money you would have spent on flowers and give it to charity in her memory.”

A twentieth-century American etiquette institute and an Orthodox Jewish publisher, writing for different readers about different customs, reaching for the same unit of account. That convergence is the reason this tool can exist without inventing a number: neither source says how much, both say in what. Flowers have price lists. So the first question the form asks is a counterfactual — what would you have sent? — and it stays the first question even when the answer is that no flowers are going anywhere.

This is the fourth tool here built from a published instruction rather than a published figure, after the salon, delivery and bill split calculators. It is the first whose instruction is corroborated by a source that has never heard of the first one.

What an arrangement costs — sourced

Three published florist price guides, and where they disagree we use the overlap rather than an average — the same rule the mover tip calculator applies to its two hourly sources. Every figure the tool starts from is therefore one that every guide counting toward it supports.

The Guides column matters more than it looks. “Three guides agree” and “two guides agree and the third says something else” are different claims, and a site whose whole promise is labelling should not print them the same way. On the wreath, Funeral.com gives a single benchmark of about $270 that sits above the other two ranges rather than inside them. On the casket spray, it describes the piece and declines to price it.

Where the judgment is

Closeness does not add money here — it moves you inside the published range and never outside it, which is what lets the baseline keep calling itself sourced whatever you tell it. Nobody publishes a mapping from grief to a florist’s price list, so the placement is entirely ours.

Three more house numbers, each on its own ledger line so you can take it off. $25 if you cannot be at the service, because what you send is standing in for you being in the room. $50 for food to the house, flat, because a casserole costs what a casserole costs. And a floor of $25 — under that it stops reading as a gesture. The regional adjustment uses BEA Regional Price Parities, which are published; applying them to a gift is ours, the same call the wedding gift calculator makes.

The zeros that move money rather than delete it

Every $0 line this site has shipped so far takes something off the table: a stair fee on a moving invoice is not a tip, a resort fee is not a tip, an 18% auto-gratuity is not a tip you can be asked to pay twice. The zeros here do a different job. Tell the tool the notice said “in lieu of flowers” and the flowers line renders at $0 while the total does not move at all — $200 of flowers becomes $200 to the charity. The money is not gone. It has a new destination, and the ledger’s job is to show that happening.

The second zero is the one people come here to ask about. Emily Post again: “Ordinarily, cash isn’t sent to the family in place of flowers or a charitable contribution, but exceptions can be made.” So the cash-to-the-family line sits on the ledger permanently at $0 — the answer to “should I just give them money” is normally no, and it is sourced rather than our opinion. Tick the box saying the family is facing the costs and nothing about the arithmetic changes; the destination line at the bottom changes from a charity to the family, because that is the exception the same sentence names.

Chai: the one place the rounding rule itself changes

Every other tool on this site rounds through the site’s $5 giveable step, or opts out of it and rounds to whole dollars. This one rounds to a multiple of 18 when the gift is being made in a Jewish context. Chai (חי), the Hebrew word for “life”, has the numerical value 18, and Chabad publishes that “many Jews typically give charity (and gifts) in multiples of 18 (e.g. 18, 36, 54, 72 etc.)”, a custom it traces to the 1700s. Our $5 step is house judgment about how US bank notes work; that one is a documented convention, so where it applies it wins. The default inputs produce $200 in the general case and $198 here — 11 times chai.

The same setting also takes flowers off the ledger whatever the notice said, which is the one place in this tool where a tradition overrides the family’s stated instruction. It does so in the direction the instruction was already pointing: Chabad’s guide to a shiva call says “It is common for friends to provide food for the mourners (and their guests)… you can just bring kosher take-out”, while noting that “you are not expected to bring anything” at all.

The tax line, which nobody tells you about in advance

Two rules from IRS Publication 526, both of which are much easier to satisfy on the day than in April. A memorial donation to a qualified organisation is a deductible charitable contribution — but at $250 or more for a single gift, the publication requires a contemporaneous written acknowledgment from the organisation, and your own bank record is not enough on its own. Ask for the letter when you give. A $302 casket spray split 6 ways is $50 each and stays under it; one person giving $500 does not.

The other rule runs the opposite way. Under Contributions to Individuals, Publication 526 says “You can’t deduct contributions to specific individuals” — and money to a named family, handed over or routed through a fundraiser set up for them, is exactly that. Tick the hardship box and the ledger says so, at $0, because it changes nothing about whether you should send it.

What this tool will not do

• It will not tell you an amount is expected. Nothing here is owed, and no figure on this page is a measure of anything. Chabad says it plainly about a shiva call and it generalises: you are not expected to bring anything, and your presence is the thing.
• It covers two traditions, not twelve. A white envelope of cash is customary at Chinese, Korean and Filipino funerals, and the amounts are real and specific. We could find no source for those amounts that we would put a sourced tag on, so the tool covers the general US case and the Jewish one. That is a gap in our coverage rather than a claim about anybody’s custom, and the honest thing is to say so here.
• It does not price the funeral. What a service costs, what a casket costs and what a family is quoted are different questions entirely, governed by the FTC’s Funeral Rule. This tool prices one arrangement in order to size one gift.
• Its flower prices are guides, not quotes. The ranges are national and published; your florist has their own price list, and a piece assembled the day before a service in a small town is not the same product as one from a national delivery site. If you have a real quote, use it — the range is here because most people do not.

Sources

• The Emily Post Institute — Funeral Etiquette: Donations In Lieu of Flowers — that a donation should be at least what the flowers would have cost, and that cash is not ordinarily sent to the family.
• Chabad.org — Why No Flowers on Jewish Graves? — that flowers are not a Jewish tradition, and the same flower-equivalent rule arrived at independently.
• Chabad.org — Chai: Why Do Jews Give in Multiples of 18? — giving charity and gifts in multiples of 18.
• Chabad.org — What to Bring to Shiva — food for the mourners, and that nothing at all is expected of a visitor.
• IRS Publication 526 — Charitable Contributions — the $250 written-acknowledgment threshold, and that contributions to specific individuals are not deductible.
• Funeral.com — Funeral Flower Arrangements Explained, Kremp Florist — Funeral Flower Pricing Guide and Send Funeral Flowers — How Much Do Funeral Flowers Cost? — the three published price guides whose overlap sets every arrangement range in the table above.
• BEA — Regional Price Parities by State — the regional price index behind the “where the funeral is” line.

Informational only, not professional advice. The Kindhow Scale is a published model, not a standard, and the lines marked house judgment are our reasoning and nothing more. Nothing here is tax or legal advice: Publication 526 is quoted to explain what kind of gift you are making, not to tell you how to file. Last reviewed: August 2026. Scale version 1.0. Figures that come from a publication are re-checked against their source on a monthly cycle; when one moves, the version number moves with it.