The Gerda Henkel Foundation has now included 69 research projects from all over the world in its sponsorship programme. With this in mind, the Foundation released a total of just short of € 6.3 million at its spring session, approving projects submitted by scholars from 32 countries – from Australia and Egypt to Ukraine and the United States. The topics dealt with by the various initiatives range from the relationship between man and his environment to subjects associated with colonial history and different kinds of places of remembrance, plus another raft of emergency measures initiated by the Gerda Henkel Foundation in Ethiopia's Tigray region.

For the last time, the Foundation’s committees deliberated on applications for the “Security, Society and the State” special programme. Under this sponsorship scheme, the Foundation has supported the kind of research which combines basic security-related issues with concepts relating to political practice. A total of 17 academic projects from the fields of political and social sciences, history and jurisprudence were accepted into the programme. After running for ten years, this programme is scheduled to come to an end after the current round of applications.

Furthermore, the results of the feedback study “Learning from Partners” were also published. Based at Heidelberg’s Centre for Social Investment, this research project had the objectives of evaluating the collaboration between foundations and its applicants, and to enable the foundations to improve on the back of insights from comprehensive surveys of its partners. A total of six foundations participated. As the results demonstrated, the Gerda Henkel Foundation was perceived as well-respected, discerning, and reliable.