Foundation giving rose moderately in 2005, up 5.5 percent after a 5.1 percent increase in 2004, according to New York City’s Foundation Center. The country’s 68,000 foundations gave away $33.6 billion in 2005

The center’s latest report, Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates: Current Outlook, credits continued stock market growth, an increase of new gifts into corporate and community foundations and giving by newly established foundations for last year’s modest increase. Grants made in response to the South Asian tsunami and the Gulf Coast’s hurricanes also figured into the rise in 2005.

Still, the uptick in grantmaking was relatively small, the center reported, mainly because foundation assets grew slowly last year. In fact, the percentage of foundations that increased their number of grants in 2005 (32 percent) was equal to the number in 2004. The number of foundations that increased their list of nonprofits served was also unchanged.

Moreover, signs of 2006’s grantmaking volume do not appear promising. Asset growth among the nation’s foundations are off from previous years: only 2 to 4 percent in 2005 compared with gains of 7.1 percent in 2004 and 10 percent in 2003. Endowed foundations indicate that increased giving in 2006 will be limited by “the lingering impact of economic downturn in the early 2000s, continued variability in market performance, and a lack of strong and consistent growth in assets,” according to a press release issued by the Foundation Center.
Projections presented in the report were based on responses to a nationwide Foundation Center survey of more than 850 large and mid-sized foundations, in addition to year-end fiscal indicators.