The Richard M Schulze Family Foundation

The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation is a personal legacy foundation built on the fortune of Best Buy founder Richard M. Schulze. Its mission statement is deliberately intimate: give back to the communities where Schulze grew up, raised his family, and built his business. This origin shapes everything — the Foundation is deeply place-based, favors organizations with long community roots in the Twin Cities metro or Southwest Florida, and rewards sustained relationships over transactional grant-seeking.

The Foundation operates three programs: Education, Human & Social Services, and Health & Medicine. The first two are open to unsolicited applications; Health & Medicine is strictly invitation-only. With $218.3 million in assets (FY2024) and annual grants averaging $50 million over FY2019-2023, the Foundation far exceeds the legal 5% payout minimum — its 20-24% annual distribution rate signals a funder actively deploying capital, not sitting on it.

The giving philosophy favors "specific project grants with clear and focused outcomes," though general operating support and capital requests are considered for organizations with established relationships. New applicants face a deliberate tiered entry: first-time grants are capped at $15,000 or less. This is not a budget constraint — it is a structured qualification test. Organizations that navigate an entry grant and deliver strong reporting can grow into major awards exceeding $50,000 per cycle.

The application process is a two-stage funnel: complete an online eligibility questionnaire, then submit a Letter of Inquiry through the GrantInterface portal. If the LOI is approved, applicants return to submit a full application. The review process spans approximately six months, with two cycles annually (spring and fall). Organizations are limited to one LOI submission per year.

The grantee roster reveals a strong Catholic institutional thread: the Catholic Schools Center of Excellence has received $28.3 million across 89 grants — the Foundation's largest cumulative recipient by a wide margin. University of St Thomas ($8.2M, 47 grants) reinforces this pattern. First-time applicants aligned with Catholic or faith-based education can and should reference this legacy.

The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation has documented $185.5 million in total grants across 6,134 transactions. The distribution is sharply bimodal: the median grant is just $3,239 while the average is $32,593 — indicating that the majority of transactions are small disbursements ($100-$10,000), while a concentrated set of major awards dominates total dollar volume. The typical grant range relevant to most applicants runs $15,000 (entry-level) to $500,000 (established partner, major award). The documented maximum is $3 million.

Annual giving peaked at $53.3 million in FY2020 and trended modestly to $52.9M (2021), $52.3M (2022), and $46.5M (2023). Total assets have declined from $257.7M (2020) to $218.3M (2024) as the Foundation draws down its corpus at a deliberate pace. FY2024 total revenue of $102.8M suggests partial corpus restoration.

By geography: Minnesota commands 2,622 grant transactions versus 1,037 in Florida — roughly 72%/28% by volume — consistent with the Foundation's Twin Cities origins. Florida activity concentrates in Collier County (Naples) and Lee County (Fort Myers).

By program area, Education leads dollar volume: Catholic Schools Center of Excellence alone accounts for $28.3M, University of St Thomas adds $8.2M, and University of Minnesota Foundation contributes $5.6M. Human & Social Services provides the broadest recipient base — Salvation Army chapters, Second Harvest Heartland, Harry Chapin Food Bank, Open Arms of Minnesota, Simpson Housing Services, and Lutheran Social Services all appear repeatedly. This program area shows strong recurring support for hunger, housing, and emergency services organizations.

Health & Medicine, while invite-only, commands high-value single grants: Moffitt Cancer Center has received $8M across three grants (average $2.7M each), JDRF Minnesota & Dakotas Chapter received $4M across three grants, and the Lee Health complex received $1.36M. A typical Health grant is a one-time or biennial major award rather than annual recurring support.

The five foundations closest in asset size to Schulze (~$218M) from the database provide context for positioning this funder:

The Schulze Foundation stands apart in this asset-equivalent peer group for three reasons. First, its $46.5M annual giving represents a payout rate exceeding 21% of assets — dramatically above the legal 5% minimum and likely the highest among these five peers. Second, it operates a genuinely open application process with a documented portal and published schedule, a rarity at this giving level. Third, its dual-geography strategy — Twin Cities and Southwest Florida — creates two distinct grant communities with limited overlap, meaning applicants in either market face less competition than they would from a national or single-metro funder of equivalent scale. For Minnesota and Florida nonprofits, Schulze is the most accessible major funder of its size in either region.

The most significant recent announcement came November 11, 2025: the Foundation committed a $5 million matching gift to Children's Minnesota's Together for Families Fund, described as the largest gift ever made to Children's Minnesota. The challenge grant runs through December 31, 2026, matching every dollar donated to the Fund dollar-for-dollar. This is part of a 2025-2026 pivot toward matching gifts as a philanthropic tool — leveraging Foundation dollars to mobilize broader community giving.

In February 2026, St. Paul College formally recognized a $500,000 Foundation partnership for Early Career and Technical Education programming — the most public signal yet of the Foundation's expanding interest in vocational and workforce pathways beyond traditional four-year institutions.

On January 9, 2026, board trustee Debra L. Schulze (daughter of the founder) attended the grand opening of Moffitt Cancer Center's new Florida facility. Moffitt is the Foundation's largest Health & Medicine grantee with $8 million in cumulative grants across three awards.

In late February 2026, Lee Health Foundation announced a $380,000 matching challenge grant from Schulze helped raise over $796,000 for the Edison histotripsy robotic system — an FDA-approved ultrasound platform for liver tumor destruction — at Lee Health Cancer Institute in Fort Myers.

Board and executive leadership have been stable for multiple fiscal years. President and CEO Mark C. Dienhart has led the Foundation continuously, with compensation ranging from $424,077 to $604,446 across recent fiscal years. Trustee composition includes Debra L. Schulze and Richard V. Schulze (family representation), alongside independent trustees including former University of Minnesota president Robert H. Bruininks, tech investor Ann L. Winblad, and former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz.

The most important tactical insight for Schulze applicants is the tiered entry system. The Foundation explicitly limits first-time grants to $15,000 and under. Do not anchor your first request at $50,000 hoping to negotiate — the system is designed to filter for this. Submit at $10,000-$15,000 with a specific, time-bounded project that will generate concrete outcome data you can report within 12 months. This investment pays forward: organizations that pass the entry test and report well become eligible for major awards ($50,000+) in subsequent cycles.

Geographic alignment is non-negotiable. Confirm your primary service area falls within the Twin Cities 7-county metro (Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Washington counties) or Lee/Collier counties in Florida before investing in an application. Applications from adjacent counties or statewide organizations without a demonstrated local footprint are rarely funded.

For Health & Medicine work (cancer, Type 1 diabetes, regenerative medicine): do not apply through the standard portal. These grants are invitation-only. Build a relationship through Education or Human Services first; Foundation staff identify Health & Medicine prospects from within the existing grantee network.

The eligibility questionnaire is a hard gate. Answer honestly — misrepresenting geography, 501(c)(3) status, or program area to pass the screen damages long-term credibility with Foundation staff, who maintain institutional memory across cycles.

In your LOI and full proposal, lead with measurable outcomes: specific metrics, baseline data, and a reporting commitment. The Foundation's grant-making guidelines explicitly favor "specific project grants with clear and focused outcomes." Vague programmatic language or theory-of-change framing without concrete numbers weakens applications.

For timing: the fall 2025 board awarded grants at its September 8-10 meeting, suggesting fall cycle reviews close in August-September. Aim to submit your fall LOI in March-April and your spring LOI in September-October to give the full 6-month review runway. The Collier Community Foundation in Naples ($11.6M in pass-through grants received from Schulze) is a useful intermediary for smaller Collier County organizations seeking introductions to the Foundation's Florida program staff.