It is not difficult to find the grant funds, but people are not aware of the process. This is probably due to the fact that the philanthropic foundations will be swamped by people who are not aware of the process of authoring a grant if the foundations were thrown online. The Foundation centre is the best place for the philanthropic foundations. If you have experience in grant writing then you can polish your skills because many philanthropic foundations are providing the exact criteria for a grant.
The Foundation centre is dedicated to serve the media, general public, policy makers, researchers, grant makers, and the grant seekers. You can subscribe to the Foundation centre’s online service for using the listings provided by them. This is not a free service; you have to pay $19.95 a month. However, you can also use this software at free of cost in some of the public libraries. The search results returned by this software depend on your keyword. If your keyword is more specific then you can get more institutions. You can receive grants from multiple foundations if your grant proposals are more creative.
For example, to provide funds to an equestrian program, you have to search for “rescued horses formerly mistreated”. You should also tailor a grant application for a particular breed of horse. You can also tailor a grant towards “emotional bonding by grooming horses”. One foundation may provide funds for psychological use, another for the animals that are formerly abused, and one for a horse breed. So in this way, you can receive funds from many sources.
When I searched the Foundation centre with the term “horses”, I got a list of information related to horses. One among them is Gennessee Brewing Company. This company is donating funds to the Rochester Arts to place their fiberglass horses in downtown. You can also search for the grants provided by Gennessee.
When I searched with “grants for US equestrian programs” along with USA equestrian and Kellogg foundation’s equestrian grants, I found a few sites of interest. Some of the foundations that are in the list are area specific, but there are also some that are not area specific. Some of the search terms and the resultant links are given below.
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USA Equestrian – www.nis.wvu.edu/
GuideStar – www.guidestar.org
For this you need to have the company’s EIN number, which you can get from the Foundation Centre software and see whether the company has provided any funds the previous year.
This is not a Foundation search but rather a sector search. With this search you can review the grant making criteria and you need access to the Foundation software for this search.
You can also go for corporate sponsorship. You can try to write about different breed associations for this sponsorship. Morgan Horse Association is providing many scholarships for individual equestrian athletes. They might show interest towards the under-funded team. You have to notify the university before contacting the organizations.
For more read our article on grants available for equestrian schooling.
