The David M. Brown Planetarium, which sits on the grounds of Washington-Lee High School. (Courtesy: Saveplanetarium.org)

Members of a nonprofit group seeking to save Arlington's David M. Brown planetarium are seeing stars this week.

Amid planning for a ramped-up benefit concert that has added a member of Congress and a former astronaut to its program, the Save Arlington's David M. Brown Planetarium  group also received word of its first major gift toward its fund-raising goal.

The roughly $50,000 award will come from the Children's Fund of Metropolitan Washington, a nonprofit group supporting orphan services that recently decided to close its doors.

Save Arlington's David M. Brown Planetarium formed earlier this year after the Arlington Public Schools board decided to close the planetarium citing its need for $400,000 in improvements.

The Children's Fund was looking for an organization to take over its assets that has a similar mission, according to Save the Planetarium. The Children's Fund was until recently "fund[ing] activities that instilled optimism and broadened a child’s horizon, and appreciated the uniqueness of each child," according to its web site.

The grant is expected to total around $50,000, but a final number isn't available yet because The Children's Fund hasn't finished liquidating its assets, says Save the Planetarium Executive Director Alice Monet.

The $50,000 will be a big step toward the group's goal of raising $400,000 by the end of the current school year. Monet is also hoping it will serve as a signal of support to the school board, which has set an interim fund-raising goal of $241,680 by December 2010.

Although a previous goal of raising $161,000 by September came and went without the school board raising issue, Monet says that the December goal is a little more important because the board will be determining next year's priorities at that time.

"The next milestone is more serious because the end of December is when they begin putting together the budget for the next fiscal year, and they need to make a decision at that point whether to include planetarium funding in the budget," Monet says. "Once we’re not in the budget we have to work much harder to get the money put back in."

The school board originally proposed cutting all funding for the planetarium this year, but later backed off and decided to keep the planetarium open half-time. More recently the board was instrumental in connecting The Children's Fund with Save the Planetarium organizers.

The Save the Planetarium group is working aggressively to meet or get close to the proposed December funding level, Monet says. She's hoping that the upcoming benefit concert at Washington-Lee High School will help. Rep. Jim Moran will make a keynote speech at the event, and Bill Readdy, a former NASA deputy administrator that worked with David M. Brown, is also participating.

Readdy has also offered to help the group with fund-raising. All in all, Monet says, the group is feeling good about the momentum that's building around the planetarium.

"I’m guardedly optimistic," Monet says. "Although we don’t have all the money in hand that we need, it seems like doors are starting to open, and the board's really working with us now."