Broncos to begin allocating $15M in donations
REGINA The father of a Humboldt Broncos player lost in April’s horrific bus crash says families are largely united behind a board now taking steps toward allocating about $15 million in GoFundMe donations.
The board of directors of the Humboldt Broncos Memorial Fund unveiled what that process will look like on Thursday.
It will involve an advisory committee, input from families and judicial approval.
Broncos president Kevin Garinger said he expects the work will be complete within about three months.
“Our focus remains, as it has from the very beginning, on supporting our families,” said Garinger, who is also the fund’s director.
Scott Thomas, whose son Evan Thomas was one of the 16 people killed in the tragedy, floated some ideas about how the money should be divvied up: with preference to be given to those with the greatest need. But he expressed confidence that, whatever happens, the process will yield a fair outcome.
Thomas said the families communicate over a messaging platform, where they share “raw emotion” about the tragedy.
The money comes up infrequently, he said, but the signals so far have been supportive of the board’s role in the process.
The disbursement process is hemmed in by provincial legislation, which sets out a court-guided process to ensure the money raised through “informal appeal” is used for its intended purpose.
Garinger told reporters that the board has begun the first steps of that process.
It has sent out a letter to bring on a supervising judge, who has not yet been hired.
It has also begun shortlisting people to sit on the advisory committee of three to seven “reputable” Canadians, who will craft recommendations for how to distribute the money between the 29 families.
He said that GoFundMe is taking a 2.9-per-cent fee for the fundraising effort — leaving about $14.7 million for the family members and players.
A GoFundMe representative confirmed that the fee is simply to cover “the cost of third party card processors and the safe and secure transfer of funds.”
One family member, Tom Straschnitzki, said in April that the donations should be shared evenly. Thomas is of a different view. He said that families with paralyzed sons, such as Straschnitzkis, will likely need a larger share of the money. He said the same thing of the children of coach Darcy Haugan and the surviving Broncos who will have to deal with the trauma of the crash.
“If someone from the Broncos comes to me and says, ‘Scott, we’re going to take a little piece allocated for Evan and your family and we’re going to give it to those guys,’ I would guarantee my son would be standing here saying ‘You take care of those boys,’ ” Thomas said.
Thomas took issue with those among the public suggesting the money isn’t flowing quickly enough.
“This is only six weeks,” he said. “I picked my son up from the funeral home yesterday — my cremated son — and divided his ashes up into 10 little urns so his friends and family could have some pieces of him. Not at one point, I can honestly say, has the word GoFundMe ever come up. This is the stuff that our families are dealing with right now.”