Parelli Foundation Inc.

The Parelli Foundation's mission is to support advanced natural horsemanship scholarships and education for students with the skills and aptitude to become extraordinary horsemen, educators, or both. In addition, the Foundation offers grants to those focused on therapeutic horsemanship, including helping veterans, military, and first responders, and equine welfare.

Profound opportunities exist to improve the relationship between horses and humans.
• Natural horsemanship instructors can develop a life-long career helping horses and humans come together in a better world, improving safety, satisfaction, enjoyment and competitive endeavors.
• Many unwanted horses suffer due to overproduction, economic conditions, opportunistic human behavior or mismatch between owner and horse.
• Children and adults with a variety of challenges and disabilities experience enriched lives through therapeutic horsemanship programs.
• The next generation of horse savvy owners will grow through youth education.

The key to success for both horses and humans is the quality of the relationship they share. Horse owners and professionals often have love for their animals, however they may lack the expertise to provide the language and leadership that their horses need. The Parelli Foundation bridges this gap by providing opportunities and education to help humans build solid and productive relationships with their horses. We do this by providing scholarships and grants promoting natural horsemanship education.

The Parelli Foundation is based on promoting natural horsemanship education and while the Foundation maintains a close partnership with Parelli Natural Horsemanship, we operate independently. The Parelli program is a training program focused on the study of horse behavior and horsemanship skills. The program encourages students to develop creative problem-solving skills and think in a lateral manner, while taking the non-verbal feedback and expression of the horse into consideration.
There are over 300 experienced, licensed and graded instructors for the Parelli program. These individuals have demonstrated ability to teach humans and horses. The Parelli Program has practitioners who serve as champions across the spectrum of equestrian disciplines. Often efforts in the equine community are limited by the scope of a particular base group. Because our efforts focus on the relationship between the horse and the human, it is valuable to all horse people, regardless of their specialization.

Throughout the early period, we created the organization, processes and systems that support our on-going efforts. Our Board has complemented our very complete financial reporting system.

During 2013, 2014, and 2015, the Parelli Education Institute (now re-named the Parelli Foundation) successfully managed courses at the Parelli Natural Horsemanship Colorado campus, Florida campus, and other locations. We had hundreds of participants, with their horses, in courses ranging from one to 12 weeks. These students gave their experiences high ratings in our end of course evaluations. During these years, the organization awarded many scholarships for a total of over $200,000. As of April 7, 2015, the Parelli Foundation transitioned all courses and campus responsibilities to Parelli Natural Horsemanship Inc. Both parties are pleased with this win-win change.

This change permits the Parelli Foundation to focus on our philanthropic program areas, without the involvement and resource drain of also managing the courses and campus ranches.

The Way Forward

We have expanded our outreach to therapeutic and horse welfare programs. In May, 2015 our first "Rehoming for Life" clinic was offered in California, led by natural horsemanship professional Erin Fowler. This was an intensive course focused on the needs of horse rescue professionals. Additional “Horses Helping Humans" courses will be offered to Parelli and therapeutic professionals. To maximize the connection with the serving community, these sections will be offered in residence at three therapeutic centers throughout the US. The Foundation piloted their first Future of Horsemanship program in 2015. This program helps qualified youth's achieve their goals, with a successful crop of young horsemen receiving these scholarship each year since.

The Parelli Foundation hopes to increase the scholarship support it can offer to students over time. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that anyone who wants to learn Natural Horsemanship skills will be able to do so regardless of financial resources.