ELAINE VASQUEZ WAS

clearly enjoying her fairy-godmother moment. On a recent afternoon the compact, cheerful 63-year-old community-newspaper publisher and events planner was visiting two of the many nonprofits she supports in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and everyone was eager to impress her. At Lighthouse of Broward, a training center for the blind, Development Director Carol McKeever spent an hour showing off resources like the reading machines, the kiddie playroom and the training kitchen. But Vasquez couldn't resist stealing the show. She wiggled her hips at the handsome ophthalmologist ("Wish I could get my eyes examined!"), snatched a braille calendar for her three grandkids and gave McKeever tips on wrangling donations from physicians: "Trust me, my husband's a doctor. They only read faxes!"

Next stop: the Daniel D. Cantor Senior Center, where Director Gail Weisberg welcomed Vasquez with a warm hug. Vasquez was asking an octogenarian for a date when Weisberg whisked her away to the cafeteria, where nearly 100 seniors were enjoying a kosher lunch. Weisberg introduced their visitor. "You know the Sunday-afternoon programs you all enjoy so much?" she asked. "Well, here's the person who makes it possible: Elaine Vasquez!" After a slight pause the room suddenly erupted in thunderous applause. Overwhelmed with their reaction and memories of her own father dying in a nursing home, Vasquez burst into tears. As meaningful moments in philanthropy go, Andrew Carnegie probably couldn't have done any better.

When it comes to charitable giving, Vasquez and her cardiologist husband, Erwin, are no Bill and Melinda Gates. Last year they donated more than $100,000 to 15 to 20 nonprofits, including $4,000 to the Lighthouse center and $10,000 to the senior center. But within their well-defined sphere of giving elder care in Fort Lauderdale they rank as VIPs. Rather than drip their dollars into the oceanic coffers of the United Ways and Red Crosses of the world, they've opted to be proverbial big fish in a little pond, and the reason is pretty simple: Their money and their influence goes a lot further. "I'm part of something big now," says Vasquez.

Welcome to the age of the little Rockefellers. By nearly all accounts Americans are on a charity kick, donating a record $223 billion in 2006, up 39% from five years earlier. But while the major charity outfits continue to receive the lion's share of the money, industry observers say they're seeing a boom in small but substantial donations made to the local food bank, the down-the-block after-school program, the neighborhood arts center. Indeed, assets entrusted to community foundations tripled, to $45 billion in the past decade, and according to the Foundation Center, the number of family foundations increased 40% between 2000 and 2005. And as boomers start retiring and inheriting cash from their parents, they're recalling the hippie-era adage to "think globally, act locally."

Of course, there's a hitch to all this new generosity: The donations come with strings. While wealthy donors have always been able to tell nonprofits how high to jump, charities say that even middle-class donors are making them work hard for the money these days. The new breed of benefactor, accustomed to being top dog at work, expects similar control over nonprofits, demanding a say in everything from hiring the volunteer coordinator to evaluating programs. They have high expectations for results, too. Linda Karesh, co-president of the Association of Development Officers, says that some donors aren't satisfied just to learn how many kids attended an after-school program and ate hot meals. They want assurances that their donation is changing lives. "They want to hear that these kids will go to college," she says. "How should I know? I'm just getting them through the year."

For many donors the urge to manage goes hand in hand with the impulses that inspire their generosity. Elaine Vasquez, for one, admits she can't even give to the homeless without telling them how to spend the money; she once followed a man to a 7-Eleven to make sure he didn't buy beer. Same for the charities she supports. Before funding a new geriatric-education database for Nova Southeastern University, she stipulated that the school use student labor to trim the budget. "Don't they already have more money than God?" she jokes.

You can't blame patrons for demanding more oversight. The past decade has seen one high-profile nonprofit after another come under fire for the way they allocate funds. The Red Cross had to reverse its plan to divert $200 million in surplus 9/11 donations to aid disaster victims. Harvard University famously paid its three money managers $45 million to oversee its endowment. Then there's the bevy of charities that spend more than 80% of their budget on fundraising or pay seven-figure salaries to retired execs. Where the so-called Greatest Generation simply wrote a check every year and trusted charities to make good use of the donation, boomers are skeptical and want more transparency, says Linda Carter, director of the Community Foundation of Broward in Florida.

Is their vigilance paying off? We tracked down a few beractive donors who say that finding good charities was a lot harder than they thought and so was making sure their money was well spent.

AFTER YEARS OF

evaluating big public companies, you'd think a mutual fund manager could screen a tiny nonprofit with his hands tied behind his back. But when Steve Gaber retired to Santa Fe, N.M., to hike, ski and manage the $8.5 million foundation left to him by a client, the former small-cap value fund manager felt like he was winging it. After all, you can't measure the success of a nonprofit by charting revenue or tracking its widget production. And being new to the community, he wasn't exactly plugged in to its needs. When he moved to Santa Fe, the only person he knew was his real estate broker.

So like many of the new philanthropists, Gaber beat a path to the door of the local community foundation, which arranged for him to join fellow donors on site visits and sit in on proposal-screening sessions. That hooked him up with some of the most interesting folks in town, he says, and helped him develop an evaluation process that sounds every bit as rigorous as the analysis he might have applied to his stock picking. Now before visiting a charity, Gaber requests a copy of the organization's income statement and balance sheet. Does it have operating reserves in the bank? Will the year's revenue cover the planned programs? Often not. "Usually, it's a horror story," Gaber sighs. He doesn't want to wind up becoming an agency's sole source of support, so he rejects many requests after reviewing the books. In one case he offered $10,000 to a nonprofit on the condition that it raise the same amount from new sources. "That put the onus on board members to get off their butts and raise some money," he says.

Next move: the site visit. Although it's easy to wrangle an invitation everyone wants to talk to the money guy ensuring a fruitful exchange is another story. Since most small agencies can't afford a professional fundraising officer and have little experience working with individual donors, such visits can be nerve-racking, says Spence Limbocker, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Neighborhood Funders Group, a resource center for community philanthropists. Knowing this Gaber takes a low-key approach but that doesn't mean he's a pushover. The typical program director wants to rattle on about "the mission," but Gaber quickly gets down to brass tacks: How does the program work, and how are results measured? Can he meet with a trustee to find out how often the board meets and whether it's committed to supporting the agency financially? (One agency he funded ceased functioning when the director left there was simply no one around to keep it going. In another case the volunteer board stepped up to keep the agency running after the director got sick.) And then there's the question of follow-up. More than once Gaber's donation was rewarded with total silence, leaving him wondering how his money was spent. "If I don't hear from them, it's adios."

For all his careful screening, Gaber is largely content to let the agency spend his contribution as it sees fit a hands-off approach practiced by fewer and fewer serious donors these days. As many philanthropists have discovered, giving locally allows them to pick and choose exactly what to fund. If you're a pooch freak who wants to pay for dog food but not cat food at the local pet shelter, no one's going to refuse your gift. The benefit is clear: Not only do you gain the satisfaction of knowing exactly where your money's going, but the narrow focus also helps you develop an expertise in your chosen cause. But there can be too much of a good thing, says Sharon Danosky, the development VP at Bethel, Conn., nonprofit Ability Beyond Disability. When too many people earmark their donation for specific programs, overhead suffers. "No one wants to pay to keep the lights on," she says. And as Highland Park, Ill., business professor Holly Kerr discovered, an insistence on supporting a superspecific mission, however commendable, can create enormous challenges for the donor.

KERR PLUNGED INTO

philanthropy following the death of her husband, Roy. Diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 52, he had suddenly expressed a desire to start a foundation dedicated to cultivating leadership skills in the local Hispanic community. When Holly, a sharp-eyed, silver-haired Unitarian with a Harvard MBA, protested that she had no idea where to begin, Roy replied, "Then it'll be a good experience for you."

He was right. In the 14 years since her husband's death, Kerr, who shares a home with her great-niece, Emily, and a rotating band of foster cats, learned Spanish, figured out how to set up a foundation, introduced herself to new faces and got busy spending the $1.5 million endowment. But despite placing notices in local papers and making endless calls to nonprofits, she's been hard-pressed to find programs that suit Roy's vision. Lots of agencies want money to address broader problems like education and health care, but for 10 years not a single one asked Kerr's foundation to fund a leadership program. She had to get creative and she got mixed results.

She's pleased with one current success: a tutoring and mentoring program based in the sunny former firehouse that serves as Highland Park's flagship youth center. When she started funding the program three years ago, the emphasis was on the kids who were being tutored. But after Kerr began attending board meetings and making suggestions, the focus expanded so that tutors themselves were getting the attention. Now the tutors receive lessons from outside experts on topics like client confidentiality and teaching skills; shy tutors are encouraged to lead group activities. At Kerr's urging they're also tested twice a year to measure progress. Don Miner, the center's goatee-sporting program supervisor, says Kerr has been a good partner. "She never comes in acting like the queen of Highland Park," he says, adding that she often stops by on her bicycle dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. And the efforts are paying off, he says: Teachers at the local high school say the tutors are gaining confidence and are participating more in class.

But not every project in Kerr's charitable portfolio fits the mission so neatly. She was delighted to fund an internship so that the Highland Park Community Nursery School & Day Care Center could hire 15-year-old Yesenia Alonso. And why not? After meeting the engaging high school sophomore, you'd pull out your checkbook too; she shines when describing how much she loves working with toddlers. But the connection to leadership? Something of a stretch. There have also been outright flops, like when Kerr agreed to fund a program at a local community college wherein tutors attend a series of leadership seminars she created with a friend. When only half of them showed up, the program's administrators basically threw their hands up and Kerr pulled her support from the program.

She's now donating almost half her annual budget to the National Hispanic Institute (tagline: "crafting leaders for the 21st-century Latino community"), which at least fits the foundation's mission. With Kerr's $40,000 grant, the Texas-based organization paid a recruiter to convince students in Kerr's community to attend leadership seminars. In two years 78 kids have signed on. "I think that's pretty good," says Kerr, who isn't prone to gushing. But she's starting to worry that she may not be able to spend the entire endowment by the 2020 deadline, and her search continues: "I'll talk to anybody."

So here's a puzzler if you have a small foundation and big-time philanthropic ambitions, how can you make an impact beyond your community? Floyd Keene thinks he has the answer: He's funding his own innovative ideas. "A lot of agencies are satisfied helping one person at a time," he says. "That's great, but we want to do something really earth-shattering."

After taking an early-retirement buyout at the tender age of 43, Keene, a former corporate lawyer, found himself with enough dough to launch a foundation dedicated to his pet cause, self-esteem. If only we had more confidence in ourselves, he reasons, we'd be a much more productive society. To that end Keene put a million dollars into what he dubbed the Triple EEE ("building Esteem through Education and Exercise") Foundation and with his wife on the board of directors, started funding self-esteem research. He found professors at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Wisconsin who, not surprisingly, were eager to land a grant, but Keene never got a proposal, he says, "that seemed worth putting money on." Another pet idea: educational videogames. Keene spent more than 200 hours trying to interest gamemakers and researchers in a nonprofit partnership. So far, no bites. He's also tried funding experimental programs some of his own design figuring that a small donation could have a big impact if larger donors admired the results and jumped on the bandwagon. One plan, to provide professional college counseling to urban teens, boosted admission rates, but at the cost of $3,000 per successful student, it failed to gain traction.

It's not uncommon for donors to approach nonprofits with their own program ideas, says Elliott DeMerell, a St. Paul, Minn., development director with 15 years in the fundraising industry. Often the ideas are terrific. But nonprofits that accept this sort of funding run the risk of what's referred to as "mission creep." DeMerell's favorite example: the space-crazed donor who wanted to bequeath his aeronautic equipment collection to a local school and fund a junior astronaut-training program there.

Keene admits he's had better results funding innovative programs started by agencies that came to him for support, like a culinary-training program at a local high school. "Still, the part I find most exciting is coming up with ideas," he says. For his next effort he's looking to spread his influence even wider. Rather than fund a new program, he hopes to change the face of philanthropy by spending $25,000 on a 20-page educational insert in a national nonprofit magazine. "This project," he predicts, "is the giant gorilla we've been waiting for."