‘When we can sweet-talk someone into giving us a donation, we do.’

When I last left The DOLLS at a tea party a couple of years ago, the more experienced hands of this San Fernando Valley-based charity group had just finished recruiting a woman with platinum hair and spring-pink cheeks.

Describing a flirtatious arch across the patio of an expansive Studio City home, she twirled her bright summer dress and sang the news:

“Cinnamon Sullivan is signing up.”

Dropping in again on The DOLLS last week, I learned that, life’s distractions being what they are, Cinnamon Sullivan is no longer signed up. But, under the experienced hands, the organization is thriving anyway.

At its annual tea in the Woodland Hills home of Eleanor DiFraia, they recruited nine new members and gave themselves pats on the back for another year of solid charity work in which they raised and distributed about $25,000.

It was the fifth year for the young group, which was formed by several women distressed by the ways of the large downtown charity organization they belonged to.

“We had seen quite a lot of charity money going to overhead, first-class furnishings, travel, limousines, office staff,” said founding member B. J. Peterson.

Nineteen Westside and Valley women decided to make a clean break. In searching for a name for their group, they tried to make an acronym out of GIRLS, but discarded that when someone pointed out that none of them was actually a girl.

Then they thought of DOLLS, which lent itself to the name “Dedicating Our Loyal, Loving Service.”

Their charity began with just one case: a brain-damaged youth who needed both financial assistance and physical stimulation to keep his muscles from atrophying.

“Then, like Topsy, we just started growing,” said Bette Whitehead, who runs The DOLLS’ senior-care and immediate-need committees.

Now, Whitehead said, the group works with up to 60 cases at a time. There is no simple formula for whom it helps. The DOLLS recently bought a wheelchair ramp for a paraplegic and a microwave oven for a victim of multiple sclerosis who was burning her arms on her range.

It has only one absolute rule of operation, Whitehead said: “For every dollar contributed, a dollar is given.”

That doesn’t mean the women let themselves get bogged down in the world’s problems.

“We certainly are not all solemnity and hard work,” president Fritzie Spero said. “We have a bundle of fun. In fact, they’ve even started calling Bette and me Frick and Frack.”

On Thursday, about 40 of The DOLLS sipped wine, ate chocolate-covered strawberries and Brie baked inside a brioche and chatted happily.

Midway through the party, Spero, a tall, slender woman in a simple black-and-white dress, interrupted the banter to give her pitch.

Gallantly speaking over the buzz of a nearby city tree-trimming crew, Spero summarized the projects The Dolls have taken on.

Among them were purchasing equipment for the disabled, subsidizing adult day care for about a dozen Alzheimer’s patients at Northridge Hospital Medical Center and giving $500 scholarships to 18 high school seniors and college students.

“We are really proud of the fact that we establish our annual budget with no overhead at all,” Spero told the women. “We have no employees or telephone costs or office costs, and whatever other things are required to run an organization like this are paid out of dues and donations. I don’t think there are many charity organizations that can say that.”

Spero divulged a couple of The DOLLS’ secret weapons.

“When we can bulldoze a supplier into giving us a discount, we do,” she said. “When we can sweet-talk someone into giving us a donation, we do.”

She paused dramatically.

“We draw the line at some point, ladies. That can’t be helped.”

After dipping a last strawberry in chocolate, the women soon began to leave.

Long after its parties are over, though, the work of The DOLLS goes on.

Whitehead said she puts in about 25 hours a week and is now managing 34 cases.

Although The DOLLS does not go out in search of clients, its name has gotten around. Whitehead said she fields about 18 to 25 calls from social workers each week on behalf of clients who cannot get all they need through the standard sources.

She analyzes each applicant to see that the request fits with The DOLLS’ resources and its philosophy of giving a modest amount of money to do a lot of good. Some of them turn out to be quite original.

“We have a little 83-year-old woman,” Whitehead said. “She lives on Social Security. That is her only income. She feels that she must help other people.”

The woman drives the homebound to the doctor, to the store and to meals programs for the elderly.

“We are paying some of her gas expenses,” Whitehead said.

Managing that case has been a challenge.

“I said to her, ‘I need gas receipts,’ ” Whitehead said. “But she says, ‘My dear, I pump my own gas. It’s cheaper that way.’ I said, ‘You can still get a receipt.’ And she said, ‘I only pay cash. You get a discount.’ ”

Somehow, they kept the gas flowing.

“Basically,” Whitehead said, “we are dolls, when you get down to it.”