Beer Festival Donated $49,510

is one of the top festivals in a town known for festivals.

Tickets sell out within an hour. Folks from all over crowd into the Decatur Square to taste more than 100 beers, nibble food and mingle in the fall sunshine. If you didn't make it to the beer festival last October, .

But the festival is more than a good time. It also raises a lot of money for community groups.

The City of Decatur says that since 1998, the festival has donated more than half a million dollars. This year it handed out $49,510 in grants.

The city provided this list of recipients:

• Decatur Education Foundation – for support of the On the Same Page citywide reading partnership to ensure low-income students and families can participate fully in the program.

• Literacy Volunteers of Atlanta – to support the Family Literacy program for Decatur resi- dents.

• disABILITY LINK – to support the five-week informational series called Right Flank March for veterans with disabilities.

• Decatur High School Close-Up Club – to help students attend Close Up 2012, a week of citizenship study in Washington, D.C.

• Glennwood K-3 Elementary PTA – for development of PTA after-school reconfiguration.
•  DeKalb History Center – for improvement of museum storage to ensure best preservation of the DHC collections.

• Decatur’s Martin Luther King Jr. Service Project – to assist low-income senior home- owners with house maintenance and repair.

• Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta – to support Power Hour, a comprehensive educa- tion program.

• DeKalb Rape Crisis Center – to provide four months of Crisis Line answering service costs.

• Our House, Inc. – to support the Early Childhood Education program.

• DEAM – to help client households with emergency rental and utility assistance.

• The Global Village School – to provide transportation for students to school and related educational and volunteer resources.

• I CARE – to provide transportation to 12 Decatur senior residents for their cancer treatments.

• The Community School – funding for sensory integration equipment for adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorders.