"This is the proudest moment of the year for us," Diana Katz of Reston's Giving Circle of Hope told the crowd gathered at the Reston Community Center at Lake Anne last Friday evening. The group was celebrating its fifth anniversary with wine, hors d'oeuvres and the giveaway of a total of $55,000 in grants to select, local nonprofits.

As of that night, the Giving Circle of Hope had given away more than $250,000, Katz said.

The circle, which now has more than 100 members, mostly female, formed around a core of four women who had volunteered together for years on the Sunrise Elementary School PTA and in support of swim teams and Scout troops. "Reston is such a giving community that we thought we should do something permanent," Linda Strup, one of the founders, said.

Like other Giving Circles, members of the Reston circle pool their money to support local causes. Membership costs a minimum of $365 per year - $1 a day - and the group's grants committee selects nonprofit organizations to receive the money, usually in the form of $5,000 grants.

What sets the Reston circle apart from many other Giving Circles is a service component that volunteers with the Kids' Club at Embry Rucker homeless shelter, with the Flashes of Hope program at Fairfax Inova Hospital and at the Inova Cameron Glen nursing home. The group also recently launched three creative arts programs at community centers in low-income areas.

FOR THE GRANTS that were given away last Friday, the Giving Circle selected 11 nonprofits that were small enough that $5,000 would make a difference to them, Strup said. Also, she said, "The grantees that we select are always at the top of their work."

One of those grant winners, all of whom were represented at Friday evening's celebration, was the Reston-based Kids R First, which provides school supplies and small academic scholarships to students in need at 18 area high schools.

Vice president and treasurer Ginger Seeley said the organization hoped to give $2,500 in scholarship money to each of those schools this year, allowing guidance departments to decide how each school's donations are distributed. The scholarships generally run about $50 and help students pay for the college application process, SAT testing, cosmetology training, shoes for track practice or myriad other scholastic expenses. "Our criteria is that the money be used for that student to be successful in school," Seeley said.

She said grants such as the one from Giving Circle of Hope were the organization's second-largest source of income.

Another Reston-based organization that received a grant this year was NOVA Scripts Central, which provides medication for low-income, uninsured patients. Executive director JoAnn Pearson Knox said the grant money would be set aside to buy medications that the organization could not get donated, such as insulin and medicine for brain tumors. "It's making the difference for those patients in need of medications that they can't afford and we can't get donated to us, so it really is lifesaving in a lot of cases," she said.

ONE RECIPIENT of medications from NOVA Scripts is the Herndon-based Jeanie Schmidt Free Clinic, another of this year's grant recipients. The clinic also provides services for the uninsured, including children's physical examinations for school, sports and other activities and treatment for adult conditions, such as diabetes, that result from hypertension.

"As a board, we decided we wanted to maintain a narrow enough focus that we could provide care in the community on a continued basis," Phyllis Sledge, executive board member, said. She said the clinic relies on a variety of sources for grants, gifts and fund-raisers.

On the adult education front, GRACE Ministries was selected for a grant to support its commercial drivers license program. GRACE operates out of six locations in the area to provide a variety of services, but its job training program is based in Herndon, where the organization partners with Floris United Methodist Church and Fairfax County Public Schools to provide driver's training and English lessons to low-income immigrants. Graduates of the commercial drivers license program, which has an 87 percent success rate, become bus drivers for the school system.

"That's the real plus - taking a workforce need and the employment need of the immigrant community and putting them together, so it's a win-win," said the Rev. Martha Real, co-chair of the GRACE Ministries board of directors.
At a cost of $850 per pupil, the $5,000 grant will pay for training for almost six people.

Other grantees were based in Fairfax, Centreville, Oakton, Alexandria, Ashburn and Falls Church, but Giving Circle of Hope member Marilyn Silvey said most of the nonprofits that were selected serve clients from a wide area of Northern Virginia.

Addressing the crowd Friday night, Katz pointed out that 32 organizations had applied for grants and only about a third of them could be chosen. "That means we left out a lot of people who need help," she said, urging those present to get their friends and families involved in the Giving Circle. "The need is great and getting greater. In the rich times, we gave. Let's give in the lean times, too."