Amid concerns that Progress Energy will slack off on corporate giving after the company merges with Duke Energy, the Raleigh-based electric utility is showering its home town with reminders of its commitment to local philanthropy.

Progress said this morning it will give $1.5 million to cultural organizations over three years to support their programs as well as to create a free annual arts festival. The day-long festival, called ARTStober, will be held tomorrow in downtown Raleigh.

The amount of the gifts is in line with previous years, except that this time the donations merited a special announcement to draw attention to the company's corporate giving. The Progress Energy Foundation distributes charitable donations on a quarterly basis.

"This is a tangible way to demonstrate we continue to be committed to Raleigh and to the arts," said Progress spokesman Scott Sutton. "The big difference is we're committing not only for this year but for the next two years as well."

Progress Energy and its employees have pledged $3.3 million to be distributed to more than 1,000 charities in the Carolinas and Florida.

The Raleigh-based power company noted that the amount pledged is consistent with amounts donated over the past decade, despite economic booms and busts. This year, Progress employees are donating amid the uncertainty of their own jobs as the company looks to pare hundreds of positions, the consequence of a planned corporate merger with cross-state neighbor Duke Energy in Charlotte.

In Progress's employee pledging program, the company contributes 50 cents for every dollar employees give to charity. Thus in this year's pledged total, $2.2 million will come from employees and $1.1 million from the company.  The pledges were made this summer and donations will begin Jan. 1 through payroll deductions.

Employees can select from pre-approved charities or pick their own, as long as they are not churches or schools, Hughes said. Recipients in this area include Alzheimers Association of Eastern N.C., American Cancer Society, United Way, Meals on Wheels, Triangle Radio Reading Service and Urban Ministries.

"I think it’s telling that employees who have this much uncertainty about their own jobs actually pledged $20,000 more this year than last year," said Progress spokesman Mike Hughes. "We know there is an awful lot of need in the communities we serve."

Cree will hold a dedication ceremony tomorrow for the house it helped build in Durham.

It's the first home from a partnership between the Durham-based LED lighting company and Habitat for Humanity. It's also the first Habitat house with LED lights in every fixture.

Dozens of Cree employees helped build it, partly as a philanthropic effort, and partly to demonstrate its LED lights, which last longer and are more energy efficient than traditional lights, reducing electricity bills.

The three-bedroom, 1,150-square-foot house is now home to the Rahlan-Ksor family, originally from Vietnam. Prior to moving in, the family of four lived in a one-bedroom apartment. 

The Big Kick was a big success.

More than 500 youths and volunteer coaches from 55 teams in the A.E. Finley YMCA’s soccer program raised $4,290 to help less fortunate families.

Led by the A.E. Finley sports staff, the Big Kick program ended Sept. 25. For six weeks, players learned about teamwork, sportsmanship and philanthropy while raising money for less privileged children ...

GlaxoSmithKline plans to donate more of its medicine to treat children at risk for intestinal worms.

The British company, which has its North American headquarters in Research Triangle Park, will donate an additional 400 million albendazole tablets a year for the next five years. The latest commitment brings GSK's total donation to the World Health Organization to 1 billion tablets a year.

The additional pills will cost GSK about $19 million a year and the company will spend another "couple million" to increase production at drug factories in South Africa and India.

Neglected tropical diseases are “a priority” for GSK, CEO Andrew Witty said during a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “We are very keen to do more."

Such donations help to polish GSK's image as a global drug maker that gives back, and to deflect criticism over the prices of its medicines.

A Wall Street investor has pledged $10 million for a new building to house Wake Forest University's Schools of Business.

The gift from Mike Farrell and his wife Mary is the largest ever committed by living donors to Wake Forest. The couple are the parents of Michael Edward Farrell, a 2010 Wake Forest graduate.

Mike Farrell is the founder and CEO of Annaly Capital Management, a publicly traded real-estate investment trust that focuses on mortgage securities.

Jim Goodnight and John Sall, the Triangle's two richest men, apparently haven't gotten a call from Warren Buffett, yet.

The billionaire investor this week released a list of 40 ultra-rich people who have joined his pledge to give more than half their wealth to charity. Buffett noted that he's contacted 70 to 80 people on the Forbes magazine list of the richest people and plans to keep pushing others to sign on.

“We don’t give up on them,” Buffett said. “Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future, so we’ll keep working.”

SAS co-founders Goodnight, above left, and Sall, right, haven't been contacted, said Beverly Brown, a spokeswoman for the Cary software company.

Goodnight held the No. 33 spot on the last Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated net worth of $6.8 billion. Sall had the No. 91 spot with $3.4 billion.

Brown declined to comment on whether the two men are considering joining Buffett's pledge. "They are making a significant impact through donations of technology to schools and the Goodnight Educational Foundation," she wrote in an e-mail.

A Durham-based nonprofit that employs blind and visually impaired people to manufacture and sell mattresses, military supplies and other products has donated $12 million to help build a new Duke Eye Center.

With the gift from LC Industries, officials with the Duke University Health System have begun planning the project and expect to apply for permission to build a larger facility with state regulators by early next year.

The current Duke Eye Center treats more than 80,000 patients a year and the volume of surgeries and clinic visits has increased 9 percent a year for the past five years. The aging population and diseases such as diabetes are fueling a surge in vision loss.

"For years, we have been bursting at the seams in our current facility," said center chairman David Epstein, center chairman and Duke's chairman of Ophthalmology, in a prepared statement.

GlaxoSmithKline is getting its name in the stars.

The pharmaceutical company gave $1.5 million to help convert the Star Theater at the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill to digital from analog technology.

The theater will be renamed the GlaxoSmithKline Fulldome Theater, officials announced today.

GSK has supported programs at Morehead for years. The British company has its North American headquarters in Research Triangle Park and employs about 5,000 people in the Triangle.

The company "is committed to making positive contributions to the communities where employees live and work and to invest in health and education programs," GSK senior vice president Janice Whitaker said in a prepared statement.

Such donations also help corporations build their brand names.

The theater is closed during January for the conversion and is scheduled to reopen Feb. 5. Morehead officials expect more than 160,000 visitors, including 85,000 schoolchildren, during the next year.

Thousands of Haitians are drinking Raleigh water.

Matthew Bucherati, vice president of operations at Pepsi Bottling Ventures, last week began organizing a donation of 2,889 cases of Aquafina produced in Raleigh to victims of the earthquake in Haiti. That's 69,336 bottles.

Bucherati got approval from Keith Reimer, CEO of the Raleigh-based company, and used contacts at Ft. Bragg, a Pepsi Bottling customer, to arrange the delivery to Charleston and then to Haiti.

Bucherati, who has been with the company for more than 20 years, "knows how to make things happen," said Pepsi Bottling spokesman George Suddath. "He got it in his head that he was going to make this happen and give some immediate relief. Hopefully, we'll be able to provide some more."

The donation is just one of many by companies with Triangle operations.