Due to the ever-increasing number of applications, the administrators of the Gerda Henkel Foundation have decided to publish the grant approval rates – i.e. the percentage of applications received which were awarded grants by the Board of Trustees – in the individual categories. The Foundation thereby hopes to give its partners an idea of the statistical chances of a grant being awarded to their project. In brief, the situation is as follows (in 2009): In the field of PhD scholarships, the approval rate is currently 9 percent. The percentage of research projects and research scholarships approved in the committee meetings is currently 31 and 19 respectively.
44 percent of applications were endorsed in the so-called “reserve funds” category, a shorter procedure to support smaller projects. In the field of academic conferences approved within the reserve fund procedure, the approval rate is about 35 percent.
As part of the Special Programme Eastern Europe, the Foundation committees approved 35 percent of the applications received in 2009 compared to 45 percent of the Special Programme Central Asia. As for the Special Programme "Islam, the modern nation state and transnational movements", the approval rate is currently 12 percent.
