The Findlay-Hancock Community Foundation in Findlay, Ohio, has received a $25 million bequest from the estate of Madeleine Thomas Schneider, the Toledo Blade reports.

The gift nearly doubles the foundation's assets and will enable it to distribute three times as much money each year to civic and nonprofit organizations in Hancock County. In 2004, the foundation gave unrestricted grants totaling $431,235. That figure could be as high as $1.7 million this year because of Schneider's gift — the largest ever received by the foundation.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime," said foundation president Barbara Deerhake. "We are just absolutely humbled that the foundation has received this."

After graduating from Findlay High School in 1932, Schneider attended Smith College, where she received bachelor's and master's degrees in physics. She worked on the Manhattan Project while employed in the Office of Scientific Research at MIT in the 1940s, sometimes acting as a courier of top-secret information between MIT and the Pentagon.