Logan Stauber, owner of the Fire Station, donates a $250 check from the business to the executive director of the Marquette Women’s Center, Beth Casady. (Photo courtesy of the Fire Station)

MARQUETTE — A Marquette County business is giving back by donating money to local charities or organizations and they’re letting community members choose which ones via a Facebook poll.

The Fire Station, Marquette County’s first licensed marijuana provisioning center, is donating $250 to a local organization chosen by members of the community every week during February.

“We believe we’re the first business of its kind and there’s been a lot of uncertainty about the future of marijuana. And we just want to let people know that this is a community-run business and we’re here to have a positive impact on Marquette and the community as a whole,” said Logan Stauber, owner of The Fire Station. “Marquette is a place we love, it’s where we live. We’re seeing that there’s going to be a lot of corporations coming into town, we just want to let people know that we’re local and we’re here to support the community.”

The business began the donations the final week of January and has so far donated to Room At the Inn and the Marquette Women’s Center. This week, individuals can cast their vote for the Beacon House or the Janzen House. Within the comments section of each poll, nominations can be made for the following week’s donation.

“We have an idea of what charities or organizations might need money but we really wanted to give an opportunity for the people to tell us or give us ideas because sometimes people know: ‘Hey, this organization gets a lot of money or this one doesn’t,’ so we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to chime in on Facebook and say: ‘Here, this organization could really use money right now. Put them on the roster for next week,'” Stauber said. “And then we’ve been doing a Facebook poll. We let people comment and then the two top businesses that have the most comments, we put them in and let people vote and whichever one gets the most votes that’s who we donate too.”

The money being donated is funds that were originally going to be spent on an educational seminar, explained owner Stosh Wasik.

“We had initially planned on putting on that marijuana initiative program at NMU, but due to some conflicts of interest, we decided to take some of the funds we had that we were going to use for that event. And we decided that we would use the funds to give back to the community,” Wasik said.

Local organizations have been “overwhelmingly grateful” for the donations they’ve received from The Fire Station, he added.

“Everyone seems grateful and happy, because a lot of them let us know that we don’t know how far that money can go because they have a budget and they’re not expecting this. And it means a lot more than $250 actually does at that level,” Wasik said.

At first, some of the organizations were skeptical to take the donations from The Fire Station, but came to see them as another professional business in the community, Stauber said. According to a Fire Station Facebook post, state law requires donations to be made only to charities and organizations where the demographic is over the age of 21.

Besides serving as a marijuana provisioning center, The Fire Station hopes to help educate consumers on the medicinal and health benefits of cannabis, the various ways one can consume it and current marijuana laws, the owners said.

Wasik and Stauber are excited about the opportunity to give back to the community they live and work in and are grateful for the community’s support of their business thus far.

“We’re from here and we love Marquette and the biggest thing is just supporting our neighbors and being a healthy and active, productive business in the community,” Stauber said.

To vote or make a nomination, visit The Fire Station on Facebook.

Trinity Carey can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 206. Her email address is tcarey@miningjournal.net.