Following the April 6 Humboldt Broncos bus crash, Spotlight Sport and Corporate Wear sold Broncos-themed clothing as a fundraiser - and the business was immediately flooded with phone calls, emails and Facebook messages.

Linda Kosokowsky showed up at 10:30 a.m. the following Monday after seeing Spotlight featured on TSN and figuring her brother, owner Mike Yager, could use some help.

She didn’t move from the counter until 7 p.m. It was a flashback to her previous retail experience - the chaos of two grand openings and Christmas rolled into one, she said.

The team worked 36 days straight at an average of 14 hours per day. They printed well over 12,000 T-shirts, one at a time - three years of orders compressed into a few weeks and sent as far away as Japan, Dubai and Finland.

Slowly through the summer, however, business slowed to the point where they could finally make their donation to the Humboldt Strong Community Foundation on Monday.

The total, $304,209, was higher than Kosokowsky expected.

“It makes all the days of standing, not moving, helping people, finding what they wanted … it feels good. It really does,” she said.

Yager said that when the crash happened, the Broncos supporters in the community that didn’t necessarily come to every game wanted to reconnect with the team.

“They found different ways to do it. Whether it was putting a sticker on a vehicle, a sticker in their window, or wearing a shirt, they found a way to still belong to the Humboldt Broncos.”

He and his wife and business partner Shannon are now able to recharge their batteries, he said.

“We still have very full days, there's not enough hours in a week still, but we’re taking time now for ourselves too. Because we need that processing and we need the healing time ourselves that we didn't get to do back in April.”

Humboldt Broncos vice president Randy MacLEAN said while the donation is a big dollar figure, it’s more about the relationship between the team and the community - and beyond.

On the day of the presentation, for example, a Winnipeg man was browsing the store for Broncos gear for gifts, as requested by family at home.

“It’s really about people, and people have the desire and the ability to be part of something larger than themselves,” MacLEAN said.