ABOUT INBGC
About the Independent National Board for Grief Coaching
The Independent National Board for Grief Coaching (INBGC) is an independent credentialing board for grief coaching. It publishes the professional standard the field is measured against, defines ethics and scope of practice, and certifies qualified practitioners through documented education, verified practice hours, and a proctored Board Examination.
The grief coach title is unprotected. No license is required, no training is required, and no one is checking, which leaves grieving people and the professionals who refer them with no reliable way to tell one practitioner from another. The Independent National Board for Grief Coaching publishes the professional standard for non-clinical grief coaching and certifies coaches against it.
The organization
What is the Independent National Board for Grief Coaching?
An independent credentialing board. INBGC publishes the professional standard for non-clinical grief coaching, defines ethics and scope of practice, and certifies individual coaches against that standard through documented education, verified practice hours, and a proctored Board Examination.
The standard is the product. The credential is what it looks like when one person has been measured against it. The standard is published in full and free to read, cite, or write into a referral policy at no cost. The certification fee pays for the work of measuring one candidate.
INBGC does not provide foundational grief coach training. Candidates obtain that education elsewhere, from any provider whose curriculum meets the published criteria, and Program Administration reviews it against six topic areas. A coach who holds the Board Certified Grief Coach credential has met a defined standard, not completed a course.
Who it serves
Who the credential is for
Practitioners whose work regularly meets people in grief and who operate in a coaching or non-clinical frame: clinicians who also coach, healthcare professionals, clergy, coaches, facilitators, and professionals from other backgrounds who support people through loss and major life transition.
Training programs, terminology, and approaches vary widely across this field, and many capable practitioners hold no credential that tells a client or a referral partner what they do or who holds them accountable. Holding a clinical license does not exclude anyone. What matters is whether the work is being done in a coaching, non-clinical frame.
Licensed clinicians
LPCs, LPCCs, LMFTs, LCSWs, psychologists, and other licensed mental health professionals who also work in a coaching frame.
Healthcare professionals
Nurses, chaplains, social workers, hospice workers, palliative care staff, and hospital-based professionals.
Coaches and practitioners
Established coaches, facilitators, and practitioners serving clients through loss, transition, and identity change.
Career changers
Professionals entering grief work from another career, who have completed grief-specific education and are building documented practice.
Trained elsewhere
Coaches with grief-specific training from another program who want an independent credential that verifies what they already hold.
Clergy and pastoral caregivers
Pastors, chaplains, and pastoral caregivers extending grief support beyond a faith community.
The board's role
What a credentialing board does
INBGC sets the standard, then verifies that an individual coach meets it. There is one route to the BCGC credential, and a second path that adds an examined specialty on top of it.
The route to the BCGC. You bring the grief-specific education you already hold, Program Administration reviews it against the six topic areas, you document at least 25 verified practice hours, attest to the Code of Ethics and Scope of Practice, and sit the proctored Board Examination.
Everything above, plus specialty education in a defined area of practice and a second proctored examination for the specialty credential. The BCGC is issued first. The endorsement follows on passing the Endorsement Examination.
INBGC measures. It does not teach.
A board that sells the training and also issues the credential is grading its own work. INBGC provides no foundational grief coach training at any price, so it holds no stake in where a candidate studied and no reason to favor one provider over another. The only education INBGC sells is specialty preparation, which is priced separately, accepted from any other provider on equal terms, and examined from a separate item bank so that preparing through INBGC confers no advantage. Specialty content never appears on the Board Examination.
See how certification works and the published eligibility requirements.
The problem
Why grief coaching needs a standard
A grieving person is choosing who to trust at the moment their judgment is least reliable. They deserve a practitioner who understands scope of practice, ethical boundaries, and the difference between coaching, counseling, spiritual care, and clinical treatment, and they deserve a way to check rather than take a self-applied title at face value.
The same gap sits in front of every professional who refers grieving people to someone. Hospice bereavement coordinators, funeral professionals, clergy, employee assistance programs, and therapist networks all send people to grief support, and most have no defensible criteria for choosing who. A published standard gives them one transparent reference they can write into their own referral policy at no cost. Referral partners are never charged for anything.
The standard is equally clear about where the work ends. Grief coaching does not diagnose, treat, prescribe, provide psychotherapy, or serve as crisis intervention, and the standard names when a coach must refer to licensed or emergency care. Being willing to publish that boundary is what makes non-clinical support safe to recommend.
Practice is verified through documentation and professional attestation rather than client session recordings. No client session is ever recorded and no client is ever contacted, so confidentiality holds throughout.
Governance
How is the board governed?
Three functions are kept apart, and no person or group does more than one. The Advisory Board sets the standard. Program Administration, led by Rita Suzanne, Executive Director, applies it to individual candidates. Referral partners reference it and are never charged.
Independence is a structure, not a claim
Grief support touches multiple disciplines, so the standard is set by professionals across clinical mental health, hospice and palliative care, chaplaincy and spiritual care, grief and bereavement, and coaching standards and ethics. Nobody with a commercial interest in candidate flow helps define the bar.
Advisory Board
Sets and owns the standard: the six topic areas and their weightings, the scope of practice, the Code of Ethics, the continuing education requirements, and the passing threshold. It does not review individual applications or decide whether any specific person is certified.
Program Administration
Applies the standard. Application intake, eligibility review, education review, examination administration, verified practice review, credentialing, renewals, and records. It does not author the rules it enforces.
Published policies
The standard, the eligibility requirements, the topic areas, the Code of Ethics, and the passing threshold are published, so candidates, referral partners, and the public can see exactly what the credential requires.
Independent of training
INBGC provides no foundational grief coach training, so the body that sets the standard has no financial interest in where any candidate studied.
Limits
What INBGC does not claim
INBGC is not accredited by an outside body and does not pursue outside accreditation. The BCGC is not a license and does not authorize clinical practice. Certification confirms that a coach met the standard, and makes no claim about anything else.
In an unregulated field, the word accredited is used loosely and often describes a program that accredited itself. Rather than borrow that language, INBGC publishes the standard in full. Read the six topic areas, the Code of Ethics, the Scope of Practice, and the passing threshold, and judge the credential against them directly.
A Board Certified Grief Coach practices in a non-clinical frame. The credential does not permit diagnosis, treatment, prescribing, psychotherapy, or crisis intervention, and it does not make grief coaching a substitute for therapy or medical care. Where a client's needs cross that line, the standard requires a referral to licensed or emergency care.
Certification is also not permanent. It renews annually and requires 30 hours of continuing education across a rolling three-year cycle, so an active credential describes a coach's current standing rather than the year they finished a course.
Common questions
Next step
Review the standard before you apply
The full standard, the Code of Ethics, the Scope of Practice, and the eligibility criteria are published. Read them first and decide whether the credential fits the work you do. Questions about whether your education qualifies go to [email protected].