But these executives are not en route to a leadership retreat or a summit with a major new client. They are part of a giving circle, a closely knit group of philanthropists who make joint decisions on where their contributions go. The nine Putnam executives constitute the team charged with that toughest of jobs: performing due diligence on a shortlist of aid applicants. Their duties begin when they disembark at a dilapidated motel on the outskirts of Malden, Mass.

At the motel, they meet two homeless women named Barbara and Tammy, who along with their children and half a dozen other families, are living temporarily in tiny hotel rooms under the aegis of a state support agency called the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance. These women store perishable food on the windowsills and trek across the parking lot to cook in the only available appliance, a stained microwave oven in the motel office. Their neighbors are a steady parade of long-distance truck drivers whose late-night carousing and occasional drug deals keep the children awake. If the two women and representatives of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program can make a convincing enough case, the nonprofit program may win a full grant of $369,050. Those funds would make it possible to expand the range of health care services at this motel and five others on the outskirts of Boston.