CHUBBUCK — The JRM Foundation for Humanity provided about $35,000 in grants towards more than a dozen local nonprofit organizations at the foundation’s annual Night of Giving event on Monday.

The foundation — which was started twelve years prior by the Jamshaid, Rahim, and Mannan families — has been actively involved in supporting nonprofits both within the community and outside of it, and for the past five years has held the Night of Giving.

“Our main mission is to invest in women and children’s health and education projects, locally in Idaho, nationally and then internationally,” said Fahim Rahim, co-founder of the JRM Foundation. “The initial project actually started about five years ago. So in the last 12 years, we’ve raised close to about a million dollars, and most of it has been invested in the local community.”

The recipients of the event were selected at a gala earlier this year after community members voted on which nonprofits they would like to see the funds go towards. Some were past recipients such as Aid for Friends, Idaho Food Bank and the Bannock Humane Society, but there were a few new additions to the list this year.

One of these new organizations included the Shoshone-Bannock school board’s STEM program, which is currently working with students on developing a STEM-oriented classroom in which students can explore their interests in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The funds received will go toward stocking the room with supplies and tools for these students to further expand on these interests, and further boost the school board’s goal of becoming a STEM designation Jr./Sr. high school.

“Not only are we implementing STEM programming throughout the school, but also just changing the field of the school where students are actually the ones leading their education,” said Sunshine Shepherd, a Sho-Ban school board member. “And so we have a ton of projects that come along with that…I wanted to say thank you to the JRM Foundation for their amazing donation and I can’t wait to let them come and see it.”

Another new organization to receive funding from the foundation included the Boys and Girls Club of the Portneuf Valley, which started up in September serving students at Syringa Elementary School and hopes to offer more services to the community in the near future.

“We were thrilled and very excited,” said Linda Leeuwrik, a city council member who is on the steering committee for the club. “I have to say the community support for Boys and Girls Club has been phenomenal, so on the one hand I was thrilled that we were voted as one of the groups to receive money, but on the other hand I wasn’t surprised because people have just been incredibly supportive of this project. It feels like everybody recognizes the need and the value of it.”

Several other organizations who received funds from the Night of Giving event this year also included All Under One Roof, Casting for Recovery, Bright Tomorrows, The Pocatello Free Clinic, SEICCA, and, among others the Leavitt Center.

“The most amazing part of that is the money is raised within the community,” Rahim said. “95 percent of the money is being raised within 30, 40 miles of where we all live, which is an amazing thing that (shows) small town Idaho (and) small communities have such big hearts.”