(FORTUNE Magazine) – Meet the Rossi family of Boonville, California, who keep busy running the local hardware store and pushing shareholder causes. The Rossis, who between them have investments in more than 50 companies, have sponsored 16 resolutions for the 1991 annual meeting season. Most of their proposals call for directors to own at least 2,000 shares in companies the Rossis have invested in, including Pacific Telesis and Manufacturers Hanover. A proposal that Union Carbide rescind a poison pill designed to prevent hostile takeovers has been submitted in the name of shareholder Vanessa Rossi, 4. Says her grandfather Emil Rossi, 66: ''My father told me companies ought to be accountable for their actions. I am passing this on to my family.'' A growing number of other American shareholders feel the same way. According to the Investor Responsibility Research Center in Washington, D.C., private investors are using 600 resolutions to push for corporate changes, a 20% increase over 1990. Says John Wilcox, managing director at Georgeson & Co., a New York City firm that handles investor relations for clients like Avon, Lockheed, and USX: ''The Eighties cracked open many issues that touched nerves in shareholders.'' Among them: golden parachutes for top executives and greenmail paid to corporate raiders. Even though less than 5% of shareholder initiatives actually win passage, more corporations are listening to what individual investors have to say. One reason: Stockholder resolutions are garnering more support. According to the United Shareholders Association, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group, the average tally in favor of private investor proposals has risen from 7% of shares voted in 1986 to 36% today. The organization also reports that 21 proposals have recently been withdrawn because eight companies acceded to shareholder requests. For example, in the face of such initiatives, Baxter International, General Signal, W.R. Grace, and Weyerhaeuser decided to adopt confidential voting by shareholders as a new corporate policy.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: FORTUNE CHART/SOURCE: INVESTOR RESPONSIBILITY RESEARCH CENTER CAPTION: MORE PROPOSALS FROM INVESTORS