Grants for Therapeutic Riding Programs 2026: Who Pays

If you're the director, barn manager or board chair of a nonprofit therapeutic riding center or equine-assisted therapy program, this guide is for you. It explains which funders cover horses, riders and arenas, where the federal money is and isn't, and how to find foundations in your state that already fund this work.

Why Riding Programs Need Grants: Horses Cost Money Every Day

Grantsights counted 1,234 animal grants to Oregon recipients and 489 to Nebraska recipients in 990-PF filings, and therapeutic riding centers compete in those pools with shelters and rescues. A riding program's costs don't pause between sessions. Horses need feed, hay, farrier visits, dental work and veterinary care all year, and suitable therapy horses are hard to replace.

A lesson for a rider with a disability can need an instructor, a horse leader and one or two side walkers, so the true cost per lesson is easy to underestimate. Add it up honestly, then split the funding need like this:

That table is the whole strategy in short form: split the program into parts and send each part to the funder who already pays for it.

Which Foundations Fund Therapeutic Riding: What 990-PF Filings Show

According to IRS rules, private foundations list each grant on IRS Form 990-PF (opens in a new tab), including the recipient and the purpose. That's how you can confirm which funders already back equine therapy before you write.

Grantsights tags those grants by cause, and therapeutic riding grants mostly land under animals, alongside shelters, rescues, zoos and wildlife groups. The counts below cover that whole pool, from Grantsights analysis of 990-PF records pulled October 29, 2026:

The median animal grant runs $2,500 to $5,000 in these states. Price your own horse's yearly feed, farrier and vet bills, and you'll often find one horse sponsorship sits close to a typical family foundation gift.

Equine therapy grants named in the filings

The filings show the kinds of requests that get funded. All are tax year 2025 grants:

• The Charles E. Lakin Foundation gave Heartland Equine Therapeutic Riding Academy in Gretna, Nebraska $25,000 for general purposes.
• The Knopf Family Foundation gave Back in the Saddle Equine Therapy Center in Hopkinton, New Hampshire $25,000 for veterinary care for one of its horses.
• The Doris and Bill Scharpf Foundation (opens in a new tab) gave Animals as Natural Therapy in Bellingham, Washington $100,000 for health and education work.
• The Kevin and Suzanne Schon Foundation gave High Horses, an equine center in Sharon, Vermont, $2,500.

One center in New Hampshire, Back in the Saddle, received a grant for one horse's veterinary care. That's a model request: specific, urgent, easy to understand and tied to the program's ability to keep serving riders.

The filings also show equine rescues and sanctuaries funded by the same kinds of foundations, such as Red Bucket Equine Rescue in California and Dorset Equine Rescue in Vermont. A rescue isn't a therapy program, but its funders already care about horses, which makes them reasonable prospects for a horse care request from a riding center.

Get the animal funder list for your state

The Grantsights animal funder list shows foundations that reported animal grants on their own 990-PF filings, by state, with the ones that accept requests first. Recent recipients and purpose lines let you spot funders who already gave to a riding center, an equine rescue or a horse-related charity near you. The state preview is free. Paying $29 once opens the full animal list for every state; the $99 plan opens every cause list for a year; either is refundable in full within 30 days.

The VA Equine Therapy Grant: Real Money, High Bar

The only federal grant built for equine therapy, worth up to $750,000 per award in its last round, is part of the VA Adaptive Sports Grant program. According to the Grants.gov (opens in a new tab) record for VA-EQUINE-25 (opens in a new tab), VA announced up to $5,000,000, subject to available funds, for equine therapy grants, with an award ceiling of $750,000. The round closed July 2, 2025. That notice said general adaptive sports proposals not focused on addressing mental health through equine therapy wouldn't be considered under it.

The eligibility bar is the real hurdle. Under 38 CFR 77.2 (opens in a new tab), an eligible entity is a non-federal entity with significant experience in managing a large-scale adaptive sports program for persons with disabilities that many disabled veterans and service members have. To show significant experience, all key personnel named in the application must have experience delivering the planned activities and working with people with those disabilities. The FY 2025 notice also required applicants to manage the grant in a nonprofit capacity.

The honest advice: a small center that has never run a veteran program shouldn't make VA its first grant. Build a local veterans riding program with foundation money, document hours and outcomes for two or three years, then apply. Grantsights didn't find a FY 2026 equine round on Grants.gov (opens in a new tab) when this guide was checked, so watch the listing for the next notice.

Therapeutic Riding, Hippotherapy and Mental Health Programs Aren't the Same

There are 3 distinct services, and funders treat each differently.

Funders ask which of 3 services you offer, because it changes who should pay:

• Therapeutic or adaptive riding teaches riding skills to people with disabilities, led by riding instructors. It's a recreational and educational service, so grants and donations carry most of the cost.
• Hippotherapy is a treatment strategy used by licensed physical, occupational or speech therapists, who use the horse's movement as part of therapy. It's delivered as part of clinical care.
• Equine-assisted mental health services involve licensed mental health professionals working alongside horses. This is the focus of the VA equine round.

Being precise protects your credibility. A program that calls riding lessons "therapy" in a request to a health funder may get questions it can't answer. Describe exactly who delivers the service and what credentials they hold. If your center holds accreditation, or your instructors hold certification, from the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International (PATH Intl.), say so in the first page of the request.

What VA Doesn't Tell You About Funding a Riding Program

Three of the four points below come from the 990-PF filings, not from VA's notice.

1. Horse sponsorships beat general appeals. A funder can picture paying for one horse's year. That's far easier to approve than "support our mission."
2. Veteran money is local first. Before the VA bar is reachable, local veteran-serving foundations and community foundations are the realistic funders for a veterans riding group.
3. Nonprofit status is non-negotiable. Under the IRS 501(c)(3) rules (opens in a new tab), a charity must be organized and operated for exempt purposes. A private foundation that gives to anything other than a public charity takes on extra tax-law paperwork (expenditure responsibility), which many funders prefer to avoid, and a riding instructor operating as a business won't find much foundation money.
4. Safety records are fundraising records. Funders and insurers both care about incident rates, horse retirement plans and volunteer training hours. Track them.

Common Mistakes in Therapeutic Riding Grant Requests

Check every request against these 5 mistakes.

• Mixing up the service. A common mistake is labeling adaptive riding as hippotherapy. Reviewers who know the difference will question everything else in the request.
• No rider outcomes. Track riders served, sessions delivered, waitlist length and goals met. A waitlist number is one of the strongest needs statements a center has.
• Forgetting the horses. Requests that only talk about riders leave out the biggest fixed cost. Put feed, farrier and vet costs per horse in every budget.
• Applying to VA too early. Submitting without the experience required under 38 CFR 77.2 is a red flag and wastes weeks of staff time.
• Skipping SAM. Any federal application needs an active registration. Start with the SAM.gov registration guide.

A Funding Plan for a Riding Center

This plan runs 12 months.

Grantsights' how to write a grant letter of inquiry has a short-letter format for these asks, and how to read a 990-PF explains how to check a funder's past grants. For other federal programs, check the Grantsights grant database.

Related Guides for Riding and Disability Programs

Riding centers share funders with disability, veteran and animal organizations. See grants for disability services, VA grants for veteran organizations, grants for animal rescues and grants for summer camps if you run a summer riding camp.

Other Grantsights guides for specific kinds of organizations include grants for zoos and aquariums and grants for mentoring programs.

FAQ: Common Questions

Does the federal government fund therapeutic riding? Through one program: the VA Adaptive Sports Grant equine therapy track, which offered up to $5,000,000 in its FY 2025 round with awards up to $750,000.

What do foundations pay therapeutic riding centers for? Horse care, rider scholarships, operations and facilities, such as the $25,000 Heartland Equine Therapeutic Riding Academy received from the Charles E. Lakin Foundation.

Is hippotherapy funded the same way as therapeutic riding? Not exactly. Hippotherapy is part of licensed clinical care; riding lessons rely more on grants and donations.

Should a riding program look at animal funders or health funders? Both. Send horse care to animal funders and rider scholarships to health, disability and youth funders.

How big is a typical foundation grant to an animal charity? Grantsights analysis of 990-PF animal grants found medians of $2,500 to $5,000 in most states.

Sources

• Grants.gov: VA-EQUINE-25, Adaptive Sports Grant Program equine therapy grants (opens in a new tab)
• 38 CFR 77.2, Adaptive sports grant definitions (opens in a new tab)
• IRS: Exemption requirements for 501(c)(3) organizations (opens in a new tab)
• IRS: About Form 990-PF (opens in a new tab)