Giving News Roundup: Corporate Donations to Remain Flat

Among the noteworthy philanthropy items we have been tracking this week:

• Companies do not expect to increase their giving in 2011, according to a new survey from the Conference Board, a business membership group. That comes after a year in which giving barely budged. The 183 companies polled donated a median of 0.81 percent of their pretax income in 2010, compared with 1 percent in 2008. (Learn more about corporate-giving trends from The Chronicle’s annual study.)
• A new foundation-supported report examines the role of philanthropy in overhauling the District of Columbia’s juvenile-justice agency. The study credits private donors for helping the city develop more programs aimed at encouraging incarcerated young people to turn their lives around, improving prison conditions for youths, and reducing the rates at which they commit multiple crimes. The study was paid for by the Carter and Melissa Cafritz Charitable Trust and the Moriah Fund and released at at event hosted by those funds as well as the Meyer and Public Welfare foundations. (See a Chronicle article on the work of foundations in trying to change the city’s juvenile-justice system).
• A Russian financier, Vladimir Potanin, has given the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts $5-million to help it pay for operating expenses and programs. He will also give the center a grant from his foundation to renovate a lounge that is connected to the center’s opera house. Mr. Potanin said in a news release that he is giving the $5-million to honor the center’s history of “building strong cultural relations” between Russia and the United States. (See all gifts of $1-million or more in our online database.)