Last year's stimulus bill aimed to pump $275 billion into the economy through grants and loans-and more often than not, small local agencies and nonprofits are making the call about where that funding goes. In its April issue, SmartMoney magazine looks at the mom-and-pop operators who are handing out and spending the money.

For Mary Len Costa, the opportunity to distribute $200,000 in federal grants to save arts jobs in New Orleans was nothing less than a confluence of her life s passions. The interim chief of the Arts Council of New Orleans is an artist herself she moved to the Creole city at age 19 to enjoy the bohemian life and work as a textile designer. She s also a consummate civic do-gooder. When she and her husband joined a preservation group to save the city s Lower Garden District from bulldozers, she got sucked into community activism and not-for-profit work. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, she rolled up her fuzzy cardigan sleeves and broke into municipal buildings to save public art from the looters.

Costa had big hopes pinned on the funding. To her mind, the city s free-wheeling culture is its economic engine. After the storm, artists and musicians were among the first to return; the city later enjoyed a cultural renaissance as new artists poured in, attracted by the pioneering energy. You wish you could be on every street corner to document it, Costa says. She thought the stimulus grants could help solidify the city s gains in the face of the recession. But as the applications poured into her warehouse office on the fringes of downtown, she quickly realized that there wasn t nearly enough cash to cover everyone s salary. And Costa, a player on the local arts scene for 38 years, was painfully aware of what each denial would mean. It s heartbreaking, she says. You know exactly who is going to be let go.

Costa actually had little discretion over how the money was spent. She and her team crafted application guidelines and a scoring system, but they had to follow rules set by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the final decisions were made by a panel of judges drawn from local nonprofits. Costa s role was administrative, and that wasn t always easy to accept. She cringed when she noticed a favorite organization ignoring the guidelines or making a clumsy effort presenting its case. Oh lordy, you missed the boat! Costa thought to herself.

In the week before D-day, she fielded calls from anxious applicants wanting to know the odds. Julia Webb Bland, executive director at the Louisiana Children s Museum, called Costa to lobby for her art teacher s salary. The museum s art program serves 50,000 kids a year, many of whom get no art instruction at school. And what about the link between arts education and academic performance? Don t worry, Costa assured her, The cream will rise to the top. Applicants cornered Costa at parties and performances. All she could do was listen. And when the panel made its decisions, the reaction was fervid. One loser called to deliver a 90-minute rant. Another accused the judges of playing politics. Others approached Costa at an arts conference, their faces a mask of despair and confusion. They sit down next to me and say, I don t understand, says Costa.

But for every three losers, there was a satisfied winner, including an Oceanic art curator, a film programmer and a crew of opera singers. While Costa couldn t take credit for the wins any more than the failures, plenty of folks approached her after the fact to give her a hug and exclaim, You don t know how important this was to me! It s not cutting the ribbon on the Hoover Dam, but Costa will take it.