Medicine Horse Program
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 841558664
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2010–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2025
- Location
- Longmont, CO, USA
- Phone
- 3038594883
- Rating
- 71
- Verdict
- SUPPORTED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Mental Health Treatment F31 Psychiatric, Mental Health Hospital
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $583,493
- Expenses
- $511,540
- Assets
- $292,705
- Liabilities
- $2,474
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
11 people listed
Highest reported compensation
- Ania Wells (Development Director): $57,000 total reported compensation
- Anna Casperin (Programs Manager): $48,750 total reported compensation
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
Medicine horse program enhances the mental health and life skills of youth, adults, veterans, families and groups through therapeutic interaction with horses.
What it reported doing in 2025
Medicine Horse offers a variety of equine-based psychotherapy programs for groups, including: Wholeness with Horses seeks to enable women impacted by breast cancer to rediscover themselves, reconnect with the wisdom of their own bodies and return to a place of wholeness. Together with the horses, we'll have an opportunity to share our stories, create community and empower one another. Operation Be Herd partners with horses to bring a unique approach to emotional and relationship healing. Observing and interacting with horses, we develop insights into concepts such as how to decrease our reactivity, increase our presence and focus, and how to be with difficult and overwhelming emotional experiences. Just Say Whoa is a group geared toward teens who are struggling with behaviors such as truancy, substance abuse, emotion regulation, and low self-esteem. Equine-assisted psychotherapy activities are utilized to develop communication skills, increase emotional self-awareness, build connections and learn boundary setting. Participants are encouraged to identify feelings and explore positive expression of emotions and needs, develop leadership skills and a sense of appreciation and empathy for themselves and others.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 78% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
- Distribution model
- Direct operator. The filing allocates 100% of reported program-service expenses outside its grant, affiliate-payment, and member-benefit lines. This expense classification does not rule out separately announced grant awards.
The verdict
SUPPORTED - The filed numbers largely add up and most voting board members are independent. Fundraising costs are high for each dollar raised and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 58
- Transparency & Controls: 86
- Accountability: 78
- Sustainability: 45
- Growth: 80
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 60.5%; rating input score 61
- Program expense ratio: 68.8%; rating input score 69
- Fundraising efficiency: $3.96 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 12; 12th percentile among comparable filings
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 93.3%; rating input score 93; 24th percentile among comparable filings
- Pay-setting controls: Limited
- Foreign activity oversight: Limited
- Grant itemization coverage: Limited
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
- Related-party transparency: Limited
Accountability
- Independent voting board: 88.9%; rating input score 89; 25th percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 5 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 62
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
- Whistleblower policy: Pass
- Document-retention policy: Fail
- CEO compensation review process: Pass
- Other executive compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
- Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
- Audit committee oversight: Missing
- Independent financial-statement audit: Fail
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 12.3%; rating input score 60; 60th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.57; rating input score 28; 28th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.01; rating input score 61; 61st percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 20.7%; rating input score 15; 15th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 21.9% per year; rating input score 100; 82nd percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 0.8% per year; rating input score 100; 14th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: -15.5% per year; rating input score 0; 2nd percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 60.5% of revenue deployed · 68.8% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 8 of 9 board members independent · 5 of 8 filing controls reported
- Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $352K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $57K · 11 people listed
- Consistency: 39 of 40 current checks pass · 1 finding to review
- Schedules: 5 filed schedules · includes major donors
- Filing history: 8 filing years from 2010 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 4 filed money-flow records
- Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
- People: Everyone the filings name, and which of them the filings identify by more than a name.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
- High — Financial Efficiency: Fundraising efficiency scored 12/100.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: 2 of 7 not reported.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 28/100.
- High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
- Moderate — Transparency & Controls: Schedule A contributions reconciliation did not reconcile in the filed values.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 15/100.