With the help of Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel and many others, over 50 million dollars was raised at the 12-12-12 concert. But, where has that money gone?

Larry Busacca, Getty Images
Larry Busacca, Getty Images
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More than 160 organizations and counting have gotten shares of the Sandy relief funds collected so far by the Robin Hood Foundation, and many have been the type of small, grass-roots groups that seemed to be everywhere on the devastated New Jersey coastlines in the initial weeks after the storm.

Some of the grants have been small, too, but the foundation's staff said each has been designed to make a difference on a human scale.

The list of grant recipients includes places like the Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church in Point Beach, which got $25,000 so it could install showers and beds for the stream of volunteers it has been deploying to help rebuild damaged homes.

That effort has included making a $1 million grant to the Affordable Housing Alliance, in Monmouth County, N.J., which is using the money to buy and install manufactured homes for people displaced by the storm. Legal aid groups have also gotten donations to help storm victims maximize FEMA benefits and deal with banks and insurers.

Founded in 1988 by a hedge fund manager, Paul Tudor Jones, the Robin Hood Foundation is 1 of New York City's premier anti-poverty charities. It spends about $125 million per year funding a wide array of food banks, schools, medical clinics, and other programs.

Still overseen and financed by big names on Wall Street, the charity is considered a pioneer in "venture philanthropy." The programs it funds are put through rigorous performance evaluations, with a goal of rewarding nonprofit groups that achieve the strongest result per dollar spent.

The foundation's executive director, David Saltzman, said it has tried to apply some of those concepts to the Sandy relief effort.

David Saltzman / Fernando Leon, Getty Images
David Saltzman / Fernando Leon, Getty Images
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"Our general strategy is to get out to the hardest-hit communities ... and see with our own eyes who is doing good work, and then be able to pump money into the strongest organizations doing the most needed work in the toughest-hit communities," he said. "That is the kind of grant-making you can't do from behind a desk."

Robin Hood had also been in charge of distributing the $65 million raised by the Concert for New York after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Saltzman said that in the weeks ahead, he anticipated that the foundation would focus on housing - still a critical concern in neighborhoods where many houses are still uninhabitable, or lack power and heat.

"We need to make sure nobody is freezing this winter in New Jersey, or New York or Connecticut," he said.

(The Associated Press contributed to this article.)

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