One West Baltimore neighborhood group turned a vacant lot into a playground.
Another formed a cross-cultural choir of African-American and Korean-American children.
And a third set up an after-school tutorial program in a retired teacher's basement.
Behind these examples of grass-roots activism was the money of one of America's largest philanthropies, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
Increasingly, big national foundations want to finance small neighborhood projects, said Timothy D. Armbruster, president of the Baltimore Community Foundation. The foundation has matched $400,000 in Mott money over the past four years and funneled it to almost 60 Baltimore neighborhood projects.
"There's been a recognition by national foundations that they can really have local impact," said Mr. Armbruster, who is also president of the Morris Goldseker Foundation of Maryland.
Baltimore area foundations played host to a three-day Neighborhood Funders Group conference that ended yesterday at a downtown hotel.
The conference -- with the theme "From the Ground Up" -- brought together foundations, traditionally a button-down bunch, and community organizers, traditionally a work-shirt and jeans crowd. It proved that it's getting harder to tell the two groups apart.
Reflecting foundations' growing interest in grass-roots action, the group has grown from about 20 in the early 1980s to about 150 at this year's conference, Mr. Armbruster said.
"There is a broad and bipartisan general interest in the possibility of decentralization, more community control," said Douglas Nelson, executive director of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has a five-city, "neighborhood reinvestment" program.
The Casey Foundation, which has $1 billion in assets and makes $55 million in grants a year, became Baltimore's largest philanthropy when it moved here from Connecticut in August.
The foundation makes grants to help disadvantaged children and families.
With Republicans taking control of Congress and planning to slice government services, the role of foundations is expected to grow in importance.
But Mr. Nelson said foundations can't take government's place. He noted that Casey's $55 million annual budget could only run Baltimore's public schools for about six weeks.
An accomplished community organizer, Ernesto J. Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), gave the conference's closing address.
The foundation is the parent of Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), a church-based coalition that has crusaded on behalf of school reform and low-wage workers.
Mr. Cortes said community organizing is needed to reconnect the disaffected majority of Americans to the political process and rebuild U.S. democracy.
He said American elections are now an "electronic plebiscite" that has little to do with politics and everything to do with direct-mail marketing and TV advertising.
Americans are increasingly self-absorbed, disconnected and alienated -- consumers, not citizens, he said.
Mr. Cortes said his foundation aims to make people shed their passivity and spring into action as "political beings."
He cited the group's "Iron Rule": "Never do for anyone what they can do for themselves."
"We don't have institutions that can transfer people's pain, anxiety and fears into an understanding of their interests," Mr. Cortes said. "We try to teach people they live in a culture that engenders not only rights, but also responsibilities."