A monumental philanthropic gift will help offset tuition costs for hundreds of students at the University of St. Thomas for the foreseeable future.

On Thursday, the university announced that it has received its single largest donation for scholarships. St. Thomas leaders say it’s also the largest scholarship donation ever given to a Minnesota university, though they’re not sharing the precise amount in deference to the donor. University officials did confirm that the sum is larger than the prior record scholarship gift of $50 million from real estate developer Gerald Rauenhorst back in 2017.

The donor is the Schoeneckers Foundation, a nonprofit established in the name of alum and longtime donor Guy Schoenecker and his wife Barbara.

The gift is enough to provide scholarships for about 250 undergraduate students each year. In an interview with TCB, St. Thomas president Rob Vischer said the scholarships will cover a “substantial portion of tuition” for students. He said precise details are still being worked out, but the university anticipates that a portion of every incoming class will get a scholarship gift that will then “stay with them for all four years.”

In the current school year, St. Thomas enrolled about 1,600 incoming freshmen, which Vischer said is typical from year to year.

As for how long the scholarships will be available? Vischer says that, like other endowed funds, the gift is expected to “go into perpetuity.”

Larry Schoenecker, son of Guy Schoenecker and another St. Thomas alum, said his family was motivated to make the gift because of the “great need for scholarship help.”

Based on his family’s conversations with the university, he saw that the “biggest need right now is scholarship money because of the price of tuition and the stress on people of lesser incomes.”

“We thought the timing was right for us, so we just stepped up and did it,” said Schoenecker, president of Edina-based BI Worldwide, the business his father launched while still an undergraduate student at St. Thomas.

The Schoenecker name is a familiar one on the St. Thomas campus; the university’s recently opened $110 million building for arts, sciences, and engineering bears the family’s name. The Schoeneckers provided a separate gift to help construct that building.

St. Thomas has received big-ticket donations from other philanthropists over the years, too: In early 2023, the university received an unprecedented $75 million gift from billionaire philanthropists Lee and Penny Anderson to build a new arena.

Vischer, who became president at the start of 2023, said that the university has made it a point to nurture strong relationships with alumni and philanthropists.

“When you’re a university that’s been around for 140 years with stable leadership, you can establish those relationships that span decades,” he said. For some families, the university has become a “key part of how they want to shape the future and build a legacy.”

Meanwhile, unlike several other higher ed institutions in the state, St. Thomas hasn’t seen big enrollment dropoffs. “Our enrollment is very strong now. … Our residence halls are bursting at the seams,” Vischer said. “For us, the pressure hasn’t been on enrollment,” The bigger concern, he said, is ensuring students have the financial means to pay for school. That, in turn, will help keep enrollment steady into the future.

“The socioeconomic diversity of our student body is definitely increasing,” Vischer noted.