Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation supports education, human and social services, health and medicine, and college scholarships in the Twin Cities of Minnesota’s seven-county metropolitan area.
FUNDING AREAS: Education, human and social services, health and medicine, college scholarships
IP TAKE: Minnesota nonprofits should get to know this powerful foundation launched from the Best Buy electronics retail empire, especially for human services needs.
PROFILE: Established in 2004, the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation is a private foundation based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is the foundation of Best Buy founder, Dick Schulze, who grew up in Minnesota and established Best Buy as the largest consumer electronics retailer in the world. Schulze now maintains a residence in Florida, which is a second location of interest for the Schulze Family Foundation. The funder supports local efforts for education, human and social services, health and medicine, and college scholarships.
The Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation looks to improve the lives of middle-class and working-class families in its regions of focus. Education grants focus on high-performing educational institutions and also nonprofit efforts for tutoring, after-school programs, camps, student loan debt, and students pursuing teaching careers. Human and social services grants focus on hunger, shelter, domestic abuse, military and veteran family, emergency relief, and cancer treatment. Health and medicine grants are often related to advancements in medical science for cancer, type-1 diabetes, and regenerative medicine and stem cell research. The funder also has a matching gift program for Schulze employees and family members.
Grants range between about $10,000 and $10,000. Schulze awards grants of $15,000 and under to organizations that are new to the foundation and grants over $50,000 as major awards to returning grantees. Learn more about this funder’s local giving in the our awards section of the funder’s website. Grantmaking focuses on the Twin Cities of Minnesota’s seven-county metropolitan area and Lee and Collier counties in Florida. The Minnesota counties in focus are Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, and Washington. Past local grantees include Minneapolis Pathways, JDRF MinnDakotas, Upper Midwest Organ Procurement Organization – LifeSource, and Special Olympics Minnesota. In 2023, the foundation gave $4 million to Children’s Minnesota, to support its new pediatric hybrid intraoperative magnetic-resonance-imaging neurosurgery suite.
This foundation accepts unsolicited grant applications from nonprofits. It has two grant cycles per year, in the spring and fall, and it uses an online grants application system. Direct general questions to the staff at 952-324-8910 or to individual staff members via email.
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