Pepsi's plan to distribute $20-million in an online contest has run into controversy after the company appeared to violate its own rules, The New York Times reports.

The company says it made an honest mistake, but some charities are grumbling because staff members edited a submission by a charity founded by Mariska Hargitay, one of the stars of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

The company said that because of the error, it would give three $250,000 prizes instead of the two it had planned.

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A previously anonymous donor to Illinois' Shimer College has been identified amid a contentious debate over the tiny liberal-arts college's mission, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

Handbills distributed by students as the college's Board of Trustees began a two-day meeting last week named Barre Seid, a businessman and philanthropist whose foundation supports many conservative and libertarian causes, as the donor who gave $825,000 in 2007 and 2008. The gift allowed Shimer, a 110-student institution, to relocate from Waukegan, Ill., to its current home on Chicago's south side.

Thomas K. Lindsay, a former National Endowment for the Humanities executive who was named Shimer's president in 2008, has expanded the college's board from 22 to 35 members and appointed several business associates and grantees of Mr. Seid's. Critics say Mr. Lindsay is trying to shift...

The recently departed head of a U.S. charity that raises money for causes and organizations in Ireland was paid some $800,000 last year, reports The Irish Times.

Kingsley Aikins, who stepped down as chief executive of the American Ireland Fund in January, earned $320,000 in salary in 2009. After he relocated from the charity's New York headquarters to Dublin in 2005, he also received about $480,000 in housing allowances and tax-equalization payments.

Mr. Aikins remains a consultant to the fund under a new deal that pays him a flat fee of about $325,000, slightly higher than the salary of the new chief executive, Kieran McLoughlin.

The fund, which draws on a network of wealthy Irish-American donors, raised about $15-million in 2008 for education, community-development, and reconciliation initiatives in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Demand is dipping at New York's elite private elementary schools as the weak economy hits parents' ability to pay tuitions exceeding $30,000 a year, Bloomberg reports.

The number of children taking entrance exams for private schools this year dropped 4.4 percent to 4,259, continuing a slide that began in 2009, according to the organization that administers the tests. Public-school enrollment in New York City rose for the first time since 2002.

A family fight is casting doubt on whether a billionaire businessman's $60-million gift to a San Diego hospital will be fully paid, reports The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Rady Children's Hospital was named for the La Jolla philanthropist Ernest Rady after he made the pledge in 2006. But relatives of Mr. Rady's who have stakes in American Assets, the family's real-estate and financial company, say they never signed off on plans for the firm to cover more than half the gift and only learned of their part in the gift in a 2009 appraisal of American Assets' holdings.

The relatives have gone to court to block payment of $21-million pledged by the company but said they will not seek the $12-million it has already given the hospital.

The gift from Mr. Rady was one of the biggest gifts of 2006, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy's rankings.

Scientists and political leaders are blasting a Canadian government decision to scrap plans to build an $88-million facility to develop experimental HIV vaccines in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CTV reports.

In canceling the project, announced three years, ago, the government cited a Gates Foundation study it said found that North America and Europe already have sufficient manufacturing capacity to meet HIV researchers' needs.

The government said it remains committed to an overall $111-million, five-year collaboration with Gates on HIV prevention but did not specify potential future projects.

Seeking to plug a $4-billion budget deficit, Virginia legislators are considering cutting funds for and then eliminating the state's Commission for the Arts, says the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

A House of Delegates proposal to be debated in Richmond on Thursday would halve the commission's $4.4-million appropriation in fiscal 2011, which begins July 1, and eliminate it the following year. Losing state funds could imperil federal stimulus money allocated to the commission, which issues grants to hundreds of Virginia cultural organizations.

In other arts news, New York's Metropolitan Opera will raise ticket prices for the forthcoming 2010-11 season, the first such across-the-board hike in four years, The New York Times reports.

The average cost of individual and subscription tickets will go up 11 and 6 percent, respectively, with the price of top seats rising from $375 to $4...

Amid a series of scandals over New York City Council members' dispersal of discretionary funds to community organizations, the city's ombudsman plans to create a public database of applicants for such earmarks, reports The New York Times.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio's proposal aims to add transparency to a process that is the subject of a wide-ranging probe by federal and city investigators, who say some of the nonprofit grant recipients were phony or employed council members' relatives. An ex-councilman, Miguel Martinez, pleaded guilty late last year to misappropriating funds, and Councilman Larry Seabrook has been indicted on similar charges.

Mr. de Blasio's plan would encourage city officials to post earmark applications on a searchable public Web site. Such posting would not be mandatory, but the ombudsman said that if any officials do not participate, "I won't...

The head of a Washington nonprofit group has resigned after his organization became one of several to be investigated as part of a probe into city grants awarded by Councilman Marion Barry, The Washington Post reports.

The Rev. Anthony J. Motley co-founded the JOBS Coalition, one of several grass-roots organizations named in a report by Robert S. Bennett, a lawyer who investigated the transactions at the D.C. Council's behest. The report concluded that Mr. Motley, who received about $54,000 in earmarks as head of the JOBS Coalition and another nonprofit group, mishandled city funds.

Announcing his departure at a news conference, Mr. Motley, who is also running for a seat on the council, criticized the report's "prosecutorial tone" and said the investigator did not understand how nonprofit agencies work.

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A Canadian Haiti-aid charity battered last year by a child sex scandal is ramping up its earthquake-relief efforts in hopes of repairing its image, The Globe and Mail reports.

Hearts Together for Haiti, in Windsor, Ontario, scaled back its work on the island after a priest heading its mission in the city of Labadie was charged with sexually exploiting teenage boys. The charges followed an investigation that began after the charity's board told police of reports of the alleged misconduct.

Board members decided to renew the charity's efforts after receiving unsolicited donations from around the world following the January 12 earthquake, focusing on the city of Jacmel.

Emergency medical teams that flooded into Haiti last month are beginning to pull out, complicating efforts by remaining doctors to maintain follow-up care, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The head of one...