A Message from Our Board Chair
August 20, 2025
To our donors, partners, and affected communities,
We deeply appreciate your steadfast commitment to supporting charitable causes through Abundance Canada. In keeping with our values, and in the spirit of transparency, we want to share important information with you regarding a tragedy that has affected our organization.
Our message to you is a difficult one, as we are disclosing that Abundance Canada has spent the past 18 months living through a tragedy, which we have resolutely addressed, bolstered by our faith, the resolve of our Board and Staff, and the grace of our affected community stakeholders.
On January 8th, 2024, Abundance Canada learned of the sudden passing of executive Rick Braun-Janzen, a member of our senior leadership team, a community leader who had worked at the organization for over 25 years, and a valued, trusted friend. While the note he left us revealed some of the problematic activities he had undertaken in his role, it was not until the completion of an exhaustive forensic audit several months later that we determined what he had done.
Rick had been involved in extensive, unauthorized, and unacceptable investment trading activities, which resulted in the final loss of $7.9M of donated money.
The loss affected six specific donors’ funds, which Rick managed in investments separated from our main donor pools. While we know with certainty that Rick did not personally gain from his actions, the damage to those six funds remained the same, and his actions were inexcusable. Our Board responded swiftly to this discovery, including a commitment to “make whole” the losses suffered by those affected fundholders and to honour their disbursements to charities over time. No other funds were impacted, and we have continued to make distributions to charities without interruption.
Unfortunately, that was not the full extent of it. Through further internal reviews directed by our Board, we discovered other improper activities, processes, and system anomalies, all managed by Rick. These issues have resulted in significant operational challenges over the past 18 months, not the least of which affected the implementation of our new finance system and the timely release of our donor fund statements.
For a fuller appreciation of the impacts of this tragedy, how it might affect you, and our remediation activities, we encourage you to follow this link for more details.
We understand that this news will be shocking to many of you, and we want to assure you that the Board and Staff of Abundance Canada are fully committed to doing what is right for you, our stakeholders, and the communities we all serve. We also want to assure you that Abundance Canada continues to be a trusted partner in your giving plans, now and in the future, and that the Board has absolute confidence in our Staff, and our new leadership team.
This Fall, we will release our five-year Strategic Plan, which outlines our path to providing exceptional services to our donors and stakeholders.
We want to express our sincere gratitude for your continued grace, patience, and understanding during this difficult time. Thank you and have a blessed day.
Jennifer Thompson
Board Chair, Abundance Canada
Any specific questions to this message can be directed to boardchair@abundance.ca.
