What the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania lacks in experience and money, it makes up in moxie.

The 3-year-old foundation recently helped organize a protest of Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts that forced the $2 billion-a-year clothier to agree within a matter of days to pull the offending gear.

In the world of philanthropy where big money translates into clout, the tiny Women and Girls Foundation has quickly made a name for itself. With the foundation's backing, Pittsburgh City Council on Monday approved an ordinance that promotes the selection of women and ethnic minorities on public boards.

"Women in Southwestern Pennsylvania are thought of as the exception and not the rule," said Heather Arnet, executive director of the Women and Girls Foundation. "We are treated as the minority even though we're the majority."

The Downtown-based foundation began in 2002 with a mission of achieving equity for females, especially in areas of pay and being elected to public office. It gave about $100,000 in grants this year. Giants such as the Heinz Endowments gave more than $53 million in 2004.

"The economic development of this region will be better served if we can tap into all the talent -- not just part of the talent, which has been going on for years here," said Hilda PangFu, chairwoman of the foundation's board.

"When we make decisions without the full range of perspectives, we're not likely to make good decisions," she said. "We make the same mistakes over and over again."

In June, the foundation approved a three-year strategy to bring about long-term change through high-impact projects rather than supporting direct services.

Nationally, foundations are moving away from an old model of charity to a new one of investing in social change, said Maxwell King, president of The Heinz Endowments. He says the Women and Girls Foundation is leading that change here.

"When you have a dramatic impact like this campaign, it speeds that shift up and has an impact on other nonprofits and foundations," King said.

The Women and Girls Foundation worked with three other foundations -- FISA, Jewish Women's and Eden Hall -- to launch Allegheny County Girls as Grantmakers, consisting of 23 middle and high school girls who can make $10,000 grants to girl-led projects.

The Girls as Grantmakers' first project, coordinated by the Women and Girls Foundation, targeted Abercrombie & Fitch.

Dismayed by T-shirts with slogans printed across the chest such as "Who needs brains when you have these," Emma Blackman-Mathis, 16, co-chair of Girls as Grantmakers, suggested a protest as a possible tactic. Her colleagues jumped at the idea.

Their local news conference on Oct. 30 fanned a media firestorm. Arnet, Blackman-Mathis and 13-year-old Jettie Fields appeared the next day on NBC's "Today" show. By Nov. 2, Arnet and the group's members were doing interviews on ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox and the BBC. Newspapers from Italy, India and Japan picked up the story.

The girlcotters admit they were surprised by the international response and Abercrombie's quick decision to back down.

"Abercrombie responded so quickly because this was not a girlcott led by adults," said Blackman-Mathis, a junior at Schenley High School. "It was their buyer base."

As part of the settlement, Arnet and the student grantmakers will meet Dec. 5 with Abercrombie officials at their headquarters in New Albany, Ohio, to discuss more positive slogans for the company's clothes.

Abercrombie is no stranger to controversy. It earlier had been ripped for scantily clad models and T-shirts that made fun of West Virginia. Negative publicity may actually help the company, which promotes an image of teenage rebelliousness, said Steven Baumgarten, a retail analyst for Parker/Hunter, a Downtown division of Janney Montgomery Scott.

Whatever its impact on Abercrombie, the protest made a deep impression on the participants.

"I guess I learned to have faith in little things, things that I couldn't do anything about because I'm one person," Blackman-Mathis said. "Just by bringing them up, a movement could be started."

Foundation leaders credit the rise of the Women and Girls Foundation to Arnet, 31, of Highland Park. She grew up in Miami, the great-granddaughter of a suffragette and the daughter of political activists.

She received a bachelor's degree from Carnegie Mellon University in literary and cultural studies with a minor in directing and drama. She served as director of development at City Theatre before joining the foundation last year.

Arnet said she has many mentors, including Heinz's King. He said he gave her two words of advice: Be bold.

The girlcott is a tough act to follow, but Arnet has found an encore. She wants to make Pittsburgh the female equivalent of Atlanta, an urban magnet for young black professionals around the nation.

"The most exciting thing," Arnet said, "would be to make Pittsburgh one of the most progressive cities in the country where women are seen as vibrant leaders in every single sector and in every community.

"That," she said, sweeping her hand, "would be the ultimate."