New York is filled with men in the twilight of their careers who wish to donate a portion of the small fortunes they have amassed to worthy causes. But when it comes to investing their time rather than their financial assets – not including a few hours a year at benefits at the Plaza – the list dwindles. Soup-kitchen volunteerism is for students and actors. Distinguished men write checks.

When a corporate lawyer at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, Edmund Schroeder, began looking for a meaningful way to do charity work, he wasn’t satisfied by the hands-on options available to him. So he developed his own nonprofit organization. Education Through Music now brings music lessons to 5,000 New York City schoolchildren. The program started at one pilot school in 1992 and now operates at nine schools in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

“For the first three years, I was it,” Mr. Schroeder said over lunch near his office at the World Financial Center. “I was the fund-raiser, administrator, chief cook, bottle-washer, everything.” Corporate lawyers are not exactly known to have light schedules, but the 72-year-old managed to run the show “on my spare time.”

In the late 1980s, Mr. Schroeder heard about a successful program at a parochial school in the South Bronx, St. Augustine’s School of the Arts, from his friend Eldon Mayer. The curriculum blended music and academics, improving both the children’s self-esteem and the quality of their education. Leonard Bernstein and Jessye Norman were both contributors when the program was at its height.

“I wanted to get involved,” Mr. Schroeder explained, “but [Mr. Mayer] never found out a way that I could do it other than to give them a check once a year.

“I was frustrated by that,” he said. “First of all, I love music, and second, I earnestly believe that the probably single greatest domestic problem we have is education, particularly the education of the underprivileged and inner-city children. This looked like a way in which you could take a resource which I love, music, and apply it to a problem which I’m concerned about, which is education.”

He was struck by St. Augustine’s approach when he observed a class there. “I walked into what was supposed to be a music class and I heard the teacher saying, ‘All right, if a whole note is equal to four quarters, how many eighth notes is that?’ And I listened to him and said, ‘You’re teaching music, eh? I know what you’re doing!’ But the point is, the kids all had their hands up in the air, and it was a way of sort of sugarcoating this kind of learning and making the kids really enjoy it.”

Unfortunately, the program at St. Augustine’s folded due to poor financial planning soon after it won attention as the subject of the 1992 documentary “Something Within Me.”

Messrs. Schroeder and Mayer decided to start their own version in 1991, with the help of some of St. Augustine’s administrators. The result was Education Through Music. Mr. Mayer provided the initial funds and Mr. Schroeder did the legwork.

Sacred Heart School in Mount Vernon, N.Y., was chosen as a testing ground for their musical outreach – in part because both founders lived in Westchester County. They also wanted to pilot the project at a parochial school because, “We anticipated that the archdiocesan bureaucracy would be a lot more flexible and easy to deal with than the public school bureaucracy,” Mr. Schroeder said.

ETM was launched in the spring semester in 1992. The organization provided Sacred Heart with advice (some learned the hard way at St. Augustine’s), made repairs, donated musical instruments, and subsidized the salaries of several music teachers.

By 1994, Sacred Heart was designated a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence by the U.S. Department of Education.

Mr. Schroeder noted that Principal Katherine Damkohler’s participation was a key factor in the program’s quick success. She was “terrifically energetic and enthusiastic,” he said, and added that in general, strong leadership figures prominently in a school’s accomplishments.

He was so impressed that when he expanded ETM, he hired Ms. Damkohler away to serve as the program’s executive director. Her appetite for educational theory has meant that ETM now offers a fairly uniform curriculum, though individual schools are invited to tailor certain details to suit their needs. Unlike a typical symphony early-education program, which focuses on performance, ETM uses music to improve all areas of students’ academic abilities.

Each student at any participating school, from prekindergarten to eighth grade, attends a weekly music class (including the approximately 10% that are disabled).Material is sequenced, so that in Mr. Schroeder’s words, “When you’re at the fourth grade you’re building on what they learned in the third grade.” All children learn choral singing, keyboards, or a string instrument, and a combination of music theory, history, and appreciation. The instructors – most of whom are professional musicians who balance teaching with a performance career – are encouraged to cooperate with classroom teachers to organize their lessons. Thus the music theory lesson on eighth notes is synchronized with a math unit about fractions.

Mr. Schroeder would like ETM to expand into other schools, but he is “not out to conquer the world.” ETM is now consulting in New Haven, Philadelphia, and with a consortium of California schools.

He’s not proprietary about ETM’s method: He would be pleased if other schools would spread a love of music to students in a wider geographic area by replicating its curriculum. Funding now comes from a network of supporters including Con Edison, the Ford Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Mr. Schroeder finds time to further his own music education. He serves on the board of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and frequently attends performances around the city. And while his most immediate hope for ETM children is that they succeed in high school, he has some longer-term goals, too.

“I have a hidden agenda-it’s not official ETM. My hidden agenda is that I’m very concerned about what’s happening to the audiences for particularly classical music. And I hope that by introducing kids to music at this early age we may help develop audiences for the future.”