I've done a bit of 'community organizing' myself over the last three decades, and the one thing you can be sure of is big groups like ACORN are usually fronts for other agendas, and in many cases merely fronts for a single politician; if there ain't any personal benefit in a project for them, they aren't going to give you the time of day.

Any independent activist knows to not go to outfits like ACORN if you need help doing something locally; you go to local fire stations, and mainly small churches, and even some of the big indy churches, if you need volunteers and help putting something together.