About the Independent National Board for Grief Coaching
The Independent National Board for Grief Coaching (INBGC) is an independent certification body for grief coaches. It sets published standards, certifies qualified practitioners through examination and verified practice hours, defines ethics and scope of practice, and gives grief coaches a professional home built on accountability.
As more practitioners enter this work from coaching, healthcare, ministry, and counseling, clients and referral partners need a clear way to know who is qualified, what grief coaching includes, and what standards guide the field. INBGC exists to answer that question with a verifiable credential rather than a self-applied title.
What is the Independent National Board for Grief Coaching?
INBGC is an independent certification board. Its primary role is to set standards and certify that an individual meets them — distinct from a training program, which teaches skills. INBGC does offer an optional curriculum to prepare candidates, but that curriculum is kept separate from the credentialing decision. The board verifies competence through eligibility review, a proctored examination, verified practice hours, ethics commitments, and annual renewal. A grief coach who earns the credential has demonstrated a defined standard — not simply completed a course.
A professional home for serious grief coaches
Grief coaching is an emerging profession. Training programs, terminology, and approaches vary widely, and many capable practitioners have no recognizable credential that tells clients and referral partners what they do or how they are held accountable.
INBGC serves professionals who take grief work seriously and want to belong to a more accountable, better-defined field: clinicians who also coach, healthcare professionals, clergy, coaches, facilitators, and practitioners from other backgrounds whose work regularly supports people through grief, loss, and major life transitions.
Licensed Clinicians
LPCs, LPCCs, LMPTs, LCSWs, psychologists, and other licensed mental health professionals
Healthcare Professionals
Nurses, chaplains, social workers, hospice workers, palliative care staff, and hospital-based professionals
Coaches & Practitioners
Established coaches, facilitators, and practitioners serving clients through loss, transition, and identity change.
Career Changers
Professionals entering the grief field from another career.
Already Certified Elsewhere
Coaches with prior grief training seeking an independent board credential.
An independent certification board
INBGC sets the standards for grief coaching practice and verifies that individual coaches meet them through examination and verified practice hours. There are two ways to qualify, and both lead to the same credential:
Professionals with strong grief-related education and experience may apply for certification using the training they already have.
Professionals who want structured preparation first may complete INBGC’s optional curriculum, then enter the same certification process.
The curriculum is preparation, not the credential. It is one optional path to readiness — useful for those who want it, required of no one, and kept separate from the examination. That separation between training and testing is deliberate: it keeps the credential reading as an independent standard rather than a course people buy.
The board certifies; the curriculum supports.
Why grief coaching needs standards
People seek grief support during some of the most vulnerable seasons of their lives. They deserve practitioners who understand scope of practice, ethical boundaries, and the difference between coaching, counseling, spiritual care, and clinical treatment.
INBGC was created in response to a real gap: a grieving person looking for help has had no reliable way to tell trained, accountable practitioners from those simply using the title. Through published standards, certification, verified practice hours, annual renewal, and continuing education, INBGC helps grief coaching mature into a profession that clients, clinicians, and institutions can trust.
This commitment also shapes how practice is verified. INBGC relies on documentation and professional attestation rather than client session recordings — protecting client confidentiality while still holding coaches to a verifiable standard.
The gap that prompted INBGC was experienced firsthand by its founder. Read her account on the Founder's page.
Built with expertise, not personal opinion
INBGC is designed to be larger than any one founder, teacher, or method. Standards are shaped through board governance, committee review, published policies, and the input of experienced professionals in grief-related fields.
Governance
Review
Policies
Board Input
That structure matters because grief support touches multiple disciplines. A credible board should reflect the insight of clinicians, coaches, healthcare professionals, chaplains, and other experienced leaders who understand both the depth of grief and the need for clear professional boundaries. An advisory board of these professionals informs the standards INBGC certifies against.
Stewardship over spotlight
INBGC approaches leadership as stewardship. The work is not to center one person, but to build a fair, durable, transparent structure that serves practitioners and protects the public.
In practice, that means clear standards, honest communication, appropriate scope, reliable credentialing, and governance that can evolve as the profession grows — supported by an advisory structure that brings in experienced voices from across grief-related disciplines.
Is INBGC a training program or a certification board?
What is the difference between a grief coaching certificate and board certification?
Who can become certified?
Do I have to take the INBGC curriculum to get certified?
How does INBGC verify practice hours without recording client sessions?
Become board certified.
Applications are open and reviewed on a rolling basis — apply when you're ready.