Grants for Pet Therapy Programs 2026: Therapy Dog Funders

Pet therapy source review, Grantsights, October 31, 2026: Grantsights checked the ADA service animal definitions at 28 CFR 35.104 (opens in a new tab) and 28 CFR 36.104 (opens in a new tab), the Department of Justice page ADA Requirements: Service Animals (opens in a new tab), the CDC Healthy Pets pages on staying healthy around animals (opens in a new tab) and people at increased risk for illness from animals (opens in a new tab), and the IRS page about Form 990-PF (opens in a new tab), then checked them against foundation filings. Where official sources stop: none of them funds therapy animal visits or counts how many therapy teams work in hospitals, schools or libraries.

Pet Therapy, Service Dogs and Therapeutic Riding: 3 Different Asks

These 3 kinds of animal programs often land in the same funder's mailbox, and a reviewer who mixes them up will judge you on the wrong outcomes. Name your model in the first paragraph of every request.

The cost row matters most. A therapy dog group's budget is mostly people: the coordinator who schedules visits, the evaluator who screens teams and the insurance that lets a hospital say yes. Say that plainly, because a funder that has paid $30,000 for one service dog may assume you need money for animals.

Who Gave to Pet Therapy Programs: What 990-PF Filings Show

Pet therapy programs get much of their grant money from private foundations that file IRS Form 990-PF, plus individual donors and the facilities they serve. According to IRS guidance, the 990-PF is the return a private foundation files each year, and it lists the grants the foundation paid. Grantsights analysis of 990-PF animal welfare grants pulled October 31, 2026 found 112 foundations that made 193 grants to pet therapy programs, totaling $1,685,335, or about $8,700 per grant. These named grants show the range:

For example, Therapy Animals of San Antonio received $50,000 from The Will Smith Charitable Foundation in 2024 to bring people and animals together for healing, the same year the Daniel J. Sullivan Family Charitable Foundation gave $50,000 toward its capital campaign. One organization in Maryland, Warrior Canine Connection in Boyds, drew 2 grants of $10,000 from the TD Charitable Foundation in 2023 for a veteran animal-assisted therapy program.

Pet therapy grants by state

These figures come from the October 31, 2026 Grantsights pull of 990-PF animal welfare grants. States are where the recipient sits, not where the funder sits. The pull found pet therapy funders in 29 states, and 13 of them had at least 3.

Why Utah and Washington look the way they do

Utah's 19 foundations sit on top of 2 established Salt Lake area groups. Intermountain Therapy Animals in Salt Lake City drew $20,000 in 2023 and $25,000 in 2024 from the Cross Charitable Foundation, $25,000 from the LS Peery Foundation in 2025 and $15,000 from the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation in 2023, a gift filed for its health care therapy visits and its Dogs R.E.A.D. reading program. Therapy Animals of Utah, which also files as Utah Pet Partners, drew a $4,000 Eccles grant in 2023 for free visits to patients in health care settings. A new group in Ogden or St. George shouldn't count all 19 as warm prospects.

Washington runs the other way. Pet Partners, the national registration organization, is based in Bellevue and draws large gifts, such as 3 grants of $72,500 from the Select Equity Group Foundation in 2023, 2024 and 2025. Most of those gifts carry no animal welfare tag in the filings, so they aren't in Washington's 7. The animal-tagged ones include $15,000 a year from the Elanco Foundation from 2023 to 2025 to recruit, register and train more therapy animal teams.

California's pet therapy funders

California's 19 foundations made 27 grants worth $134,200 in the pull, about $5,000 each. The free preview on the Grantsights animal welfare funder list for California leads with Our Little Light Foundation, which says it takes requests and lists what to send, deadlines, limits and a contact in its filings. It gave The Gentle Barn in Santa Clarita $10,000 in 2023 for an animal-assisted therapy program. Next in that preview are the Esper A. Petersen Foundation, which gave Dream Fetchers in Huntington Beach $15,000 in 2024 for rescue, training and animal-assisted activities, and the June and Julian Foss Foundation, which gave Animal Assisted Happiness in Sunnyvale $5,000 in 2023 and again in 2024.

Why the Animal Welfare List, and Where Hospital Programs Fit

The animal welfare tag is the largest single group, with 112 foundations against 27 for health and 26 for youth, though those cross-cause counts weren't hand-checked. That fits standalone therapy dog nonprofits. Hospital programs are different: 158 foundations made at least 1 gift with no cause tag, and many gifts to hospitals filed the money as health care.

For example, Children's Hospital Los Angeles received $72,000 from the Paul Stanford Bernhard Foundation in 2025 for its pet therapy program, and the Richard Brooke Foundation gave Children's Hospital Foundation in Omaha $25,000 in 2023, $35,000 in 2024 and $40,000 in 2025 for the same kind of work. The Robert Rosenheim Foundation's gifts to Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, Connecticut, filed as "pet therapy and restorative healing," ran from $250,200 to $440,143 a year, though the filings don't say how much of each went to animals. If you're a volunteer group that visits a hospital, ask the hospital foundation whether a donor wants to name the program; grants for hospital foundations explains how those foundations raise money. For a standalone volunteer group, the animal welfare list is the better route; for a hospital-run program, the hospital's own donors usually are.

Each row is a statewide animal welfare total from Grantsights analysis of 990-PF filings, pulled October 29, 2026, so it counts shelters and rescues as well as therapy programs. Grantsights sells a funder list for one state at $29 or every cause for a year at $99, and either purchase can be refunded within 30 days.

What the ADA and CDC Don't Tell You About Pet Therapy Programs

The federal rules explain what a therapy dog isn't, and that gap shapes every hospital or school partnership you sign. These 4 points come from reading the regulation text and CDC pages next to the filings.

1. A therapy dog isn't a service animal. According to the DOJ rule at 28 CFR 35.104 and 36.104, a service animal is a dog individually trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability, and other species aren't service animals under that definition. The same text says the provision of "emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship" doesn't count as work or tasks. DOJ's guidance page says dogs whose sole function is comfort or emotional support don't qualify.
2. Access is a contract, not a right. Because the ADA doesn't cover your teams, a hospital, school or library lets you in under its own policy. That's why a signed site agreement, an insurance certificate and a handler screening process are what partners ask for first, and why those costs belong in your grant budget.
3. Health benefits are real but general. According to CDC, regular walking or playing with pets can decrease blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels, and pets can help manage loneliness and depression through companionship. Those lines are about pet owners, not therapy visits, so cite them as background and lean on your own visit data for outcomes.
4. Infection control isn't optional. According to CDC, pets can carry harmful germs even when they look healthy, and its page on people at increased risk names adults 65 and older, people with weakened immune systems and caretakers of children under 5. Those are the people you visit in hospitals and nursing homes, so describe grooming, health screening and hand hygiene rules in every proposal.

What most guides rarely mention is that this legal line is also a funding line. A foundation that pays for service dogs wants dogs placed with clients; a foundation that pays for pet therapy wants visits, people reached and partner sites. Mixing the two in one request is a red flag for both.

Costing a Pet Therapy Program for a Grant Request

Most therapy dog groups underestimate how much of their budget is administration. Volunteers bring their own dogs, yet screening, registration, insurance and scheduling still cost cash. This table is illustrative, not data: fees and insurance costs vary by registering organization, state and program size.

Report cost per visit and cost per person reached. Those 2 numbers let a funder compare your program with other volunteer visiting programs, and they turn a soft outcome into a hard one.

5 Pet Therapy Projects Foundations Have Paid For

Each of these 5 projects matches a grant in the October 31, 2026 pull.

1. Starting a clinical program. The Hillman Family Foundations gave Family Resources in Pittsburgh $75,000 in 2023 to implement an animal-assisted therapy program.
2. Adding visit teams for seniors. The H.N. and Frances C. Berger Foundation gave Paws and Hearts in Palm Desert $35,000 in 2023 and again in 2024 to add volunteer dog therapy teams for seniors in long-term care.
3. Paying for a trainer. The Gibney Family Foundation covered about half the cost of a trainer and supervisor for the Children's Home Society of Idaho's new program.
4. Therapy dogs for veterans. The Latham Foundation for the Promotion of Humane Education gave The Human-Animal Connection in Tucson $10,000 in 2023 for therapy dog classes for veterans.
5. Building a home base. The Daniel J. Sullivan Family Charitable Foundation put $50,000 toward Therapy Animals of San Antonio's capital campaign in 2024.

Reading-dog programs belong on that list too. If you run one in libraries, grants for libraries shows which funders back library literacy programs, and partnering with a branch can open those doors.

Common Mistakes in Pet Therapy Grant Requests

These 5 mistakes show up when a therapy dog group writes like a service dog trainer or skips the evidence.

• Calling teams service dogs. A common mistake is borrowing service dog language; reviewers who know the ADA rule will doubt the rest of the request.
• Counting visits without people. A red flag for funders is a report listing hours and visits with no count of patients, students or residents reached.
• Skipping the site agreement. Requests that don't name partner hospitals, schools or nursing homes look speculative.
• Ignoring infection control. Funders that back hospital work want to see health screening and hygiene rules in writing.
• Sizing asks blindly. Use how to read a 990-PF to find each foundation's typical gift; the honest starting point for most is $2,500 to $10,000.

A Pet Therapy Program's Funding Calendar

This 12-month plan spreads 6 to 10 requests across animal welfare and health funders.

The Grantsights grant database tracks open federal and state notices, including aging, mental health and library programs where a pet therapy group may join as a partner of a lead agency.

Related Guides for Pet Therapy Programs

These guides cover the places your teams visit and the programs closest to yours.

Hospice and end-of-life visits are a common assignment, and grants for hospices lists the funders behind that work. For nursing home and senior center visits, grants for senior centers covers the aging network's funders. If your teams support counseling or crisis response, grants for mental health programs is the closest match on the health side. Teams that visit children with disabilities often meet parent groups, and grants for Down syndrome organizations covers the associations that serve those families.

FAQ: Common Questions

Is there a federal grant for pet therapy programs? Not one Grantsights found; foundations and individual donors carry the work.

How many foundations fund pet therapy programs? 112 in Grantsights' search of 990-PF animal welfare grants pulled October 31, 2026.

Is a therapy dog a service animal under the ADA? No. The DOJ rule says comfort and companionship aren't work or tasks.

Why does Utah have so many pet therapy funders? 2 established Salt Lake area groups draw much of the state's giving.

What's a typical pet therapy grant? About $8,700 on average nationally, and just under $5,000 in California.

How is a pet therapy program different from a service dog organization? Therapy teams visit many people; a service dog works for one person.

Sources

• eCFR: 28 CFR 35.104, Definitions (service animal) (opens in a new tab)
• eCFR: 28 CFR 36.104, Definitions (service animal) (opens in a new tab)
• ADA.gov: ADA Requirements: Service Animals (opens in a new tab)
• CDC: Ways to Stay Healthy Around Animals (opens in a new tab)
• CDC: People at Increased Risk for Illness from Animals (opens in a new tab)
• IRS: About Form 990-PF (opens in a new tab)