Stories of Local Impact: Mike and Mary Schroeck create a legacy of giving

Leaders & Legacies: Stories of Local Impact is an ongoing series brought to you in partnership with the Daily Herald and DuPage Foundation. It highlights the inspiring stories of local individuals, families, and businesses who have made or are making a lasting impact in our community through their generosity and leadership.

The series continues with Mike and Mary Schroeck of Aurora and Naples, Florida.

When a group of local nonprofit leaders was recently asked who gives them hope for the future, they all gave the same answer: Mike and Mary Schroeck.

As DuPage County residents and longtime philanthropists, the Schroecks have given their time, talents, and treasure to several deserving local nonprofits, most notably Hesed House, Loaves & Fishes Community Services, and Brightside Theatre.

The couple recently partnered with DuPage Foundation to create a new permanently endowed community fund, the Michael J. and Mary T. Schroeck Family Fund. It is inspired by the launch of the Foundation’s All In DuPage community endowment-building campaign.

The fund will support annual grants focused on addressing food insecurity and housing instability through the Foundation’s Community Impact program, which helps local nonprofits respond effectively to our community’s ever-evolving needs.

As the need for basic services to help struggling individuals and families rises locally and across the nation, the Schroecks are encouraging others to join them in making a difference and creating a lasting community legacy.

Learning & Earning

Born to working-class families, Mike and Mary each had experiences early in life that would shape their future perspectives.

For Mary, growing up in a small house in River Grove, Illinois, with her parents and three siblings taught her about the challenges of raising a family on a tight budget.

“My dad worked in a factory, and my mom stayed home and took care of us in this little, one-bedroom,” Mary said. “We didn’t have a lot of money, but our parents did what they could to provide for us, and we always felt loved.”

For Mike, it was his father, a Cincinnati firefighter, who taught him that it’s a person’s duty to give back, regardless of their circumstances.

“Not only would he fight fires,” Mike said, “but he would go into the community and give back as much of his time and what little money he had to give. That stayed with me.”

In time, Mary and Mike met online, and the two married in 2015. Mary has two daughters from her first marriage, Melissa and Michelle, as well as four grandchildren. Mike, meanwhile, has three children from his previous marriage — Lisa, Brian, and Kevin — and three grandchildren.

“Our kids and grandkids across both families get along really well with each other,” Mike said. “It’s just a great family. We’re very blessed.”

Today, the Schroecks split their time between Illinois and Florida, where they have a second home. They enjoy spending time with their families, following their racehorses across the country, and attending local theater productions. Mike is a golfer and an avid runner who has completed 30 marathons, while Mary is passionate about gardening and teaching others to play Mahjong, a popular Chinese tile game.

“I love meeting new people and talking with them,” Mary said. “That’s why I love teaching Mahjong. It’s very strategic, and it gives people something to do besides looking at a screen. It really makes you pay attention.”

Making connections

For Mike, his career in data analytics taught him how to solve complex problems and influenced the couple’s approach to philanthropy today.

After graduating high school, he attended the College of Wooster, followed by the University of Cincinnati, where he majored in accounting. He later earned an MBA in finance from Xavier University, became a certified public accountant (CPA), and joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

At PwC, Mike learned to see the world in terms of systems and connections. He found that many businesses at the time had large amounts of information, but much of this data was siloed into separate systems. None of these systems were “talking” to one another, resulting in lost efficiency.

In the 1990s, he founded PwC’s data warehousing practice — the first of its kind — connecting these disparate systems and helping usher in a new era of data analytics. The practice grew quickly and was later acquired by IBM. He helped manage the acquisition and went on to lead IBM’s global analytics practice, which consisted of 16,000 consultants during his tenure. Mike was twice named one of the “Top 25 Most Influential Consultants” by Consulting Magazine.

Mike retired in 2015. For him, it was the end of a long and fruitful career. But for the Schroecks, their work was just beginning.

Giving back

For Mike and Mary, who are passionate about theater — especially their beloved Brightside Theatre in Naperville — life is a play in three acts: learn, earn, and return.

As Mike approached retirement, the “return” stage, he followed in his father’s footsteps and began focusing his time and energy on giving back.

Mary, meanwhile, had a similar revelation when she held her granddaughter for the first time. Looking into the child’s eyes, she realized that the way she saw the future would never be the same.

“I just wanted to make the world better for her,” Mary said.

Since the early 2000s, Mike and Mary have been actively involved in several West suburban nonprofits: serving on boards, lending their expertise, donating funds, attending events, marching in parades, and encouraging friends to get involved.

They even inspired their own children and grandchildren. As a child, Mike’s younger son, Kevin, would often join his dad to volunteer at Hesed House in Aurora.

“I thought, just as my parents did, that it’s important to let Kevin know that everybody doesn’t grow up like he did,” Mike said. “So, I took him to Hesed House one Saturday morning. I thought he’d come kicking and screaming, but he ended up working in the store by himself, giving out toothpaste and towels and talking to the guests. And then the next Saturday comes, and he says, ‘Can we go back?’ I was so proud of him. Now, he’s grown up, and he’s getting his master’s degree in social work.”

While a board member at Hesed House, Naperville CARES, Loaves & Fishes Community Services, and Brightside Theatre, Mike often tapped into his experience as a CPA to help these organizations navigate challenging times — from mergers and acquisitions to pandemics and more.

“He’s very smart, very strategic,” said Mike Havala, CEO of Loaves & Fishes Community Services. “As a board member during our merger with Naperville CARES, I remember him asking the smartest questions. He really understood what we were doing and helped us make sure we were serving the community as effectively as possible.”

“Mike (Schroeck) was, from the get-go, very involved,” said Janet Derrick, former executive director of Naperville CARES and retired executive vice president of programs for Loaves & Fishes. “Our big thing was collaboration and coordination. He embodied that.”

“We’re blessed to have people like Mike and Mary in our community,” said Ray Kinney, a former board member at Loaves & Fishes and friend of the Schroecks. “Mike is such a humble, gracious leader. I sat in meetings where he didn’t say anything for an hour. He just took notes. Then he’d put his notepad down and put his glasses at the end of his nose, and he’d tell us his perspective. And it was always very profound.”

“There are people out there who give some of their time, some of their talent, or some of their treasure,” said Joe Jackson, executive director of Hesed House, an Aurora-based nonprofit that runs the second-largest shelter in Illinois. “Mike and Mary give everything.”

‘The numbers just keep climbing’

Although the Schroecks have been giving back to their community for years, the depth of needs here in the Western suburbs can still surprise them.

In recent years, one thing has become clear: The need is growing.

“I believe it’s definitely getting greater,” Mary said. “We see more and more people coming into Loaves & Fishes — same with Hesed House. The numbers just keep climbing.”

Today, in DuPage County, more than one in four households struggles to meet basic needs. As much as 10% of the DuPage County population is experiencing food insecurity. Loaves & Fishes serves about 10,000 West suburban clients each week, while Hesed House provides shelter for an average of 500 area families per night.

According to Jackson, the shelter is seeing an influx in families struggling to afford food and housing.

“We’ve easily seen a 100% increase in families experiencing homelessness in recent years,” Jackson said. “Just one example: We had a single mom, a mother of three. She was a postal worker who had recently moved here for her job. The cost of living was much higher than what she’d anticipated, but she was making ends meet. Then, her lease ended, and her landlord raised rent by over 30%. She couldn’t find another rental that she could afford, so she and her children ended up at Hesed House.”

“The need is constantly growing,” Jackson continued. “Right now, in our adult shelter, we easily have 30 or 40 people who could move out tomorrow if there were affordable housing available. But there just isn’t.”

Housing prices make the cost of living unattainable for many families, but it’s not the only factor. According to Havala, another problem is the so-called “SNAP Gap.”

As costs of living rise, many individuals and families struggle to afford food. However, the majority still don’t qualify for SNAP benefits and other social services. For those trapped in “the Gap,” their income is neither high enough to live on nor low enough to merit assistance.

Havala said that the majority of clients at Loaves & Fishes fall into the “SNAP Gap.”

“Food insecurity is a pervasive issue in DuPage County, but I don’t think many people understand the magnitude of it,” he said. “Sometimes, when people say they don’t see the need in DuPage, I’ll ask if they’ve been to a restaurant recently. If they did, they probably saw someone struggling to make a living wage. That person was probably cleaning your table or cooking your food.”

“Bottom line, the need is huge,” Havala added. “Fortunately, so is the community of people who can help — people like Mike and Mary.”

‘What can I do to help?’

One lesson that Mike and Mary Schroeck have learned is that there’s more than one way to give back.

For years, the Schroecks have donated resources through a donor-advised fund at DuPage Foundation, supporting specific nonprofits in our community. But they recently adjusted their strategy, using a portion of their donor-advised fund to create a new permanent, community-focused grantmaking endowment at the Foundation to address local needs in the areas of food insecurity and housing instability.

The Michael J. and Mary T. Schroeck Family Fund was inspired by DuPage Foundation’s new All In DuPage campaign, a community-wide endowment-building campaign that aims to raise $35 million to create permanent resources to grow our community’s capacity to make robust, sustained, collective impact where it matters most.

For the Schroecks, that means their contributed funds will be flexible and more impactful than ever.

“Endowed community funds like the one Mike and Mary have created at DuPage Foundation are powerful because they provide us with the ability to respond nimbly and strategically to today’s challenges as well as tomorrow’s,” said Mike Sitrick, president & CEO of DuPage Foundation. “As other sources of community funding disappear and needs rise, we are being looked to more and more by our community and nonprofits to fill the gap, but we can’t do it alone.

“Our All In DuPage campaign is all about creating a local collective impact,” Sitrick said. “When people make gifts to our community endowment funds, we can invest them, steward them wisely, and use the earnings year after year to address our community’s greatest challenges and opportunities.”

Making donations is only one way to get involved. For those who want to make a difference in their community, the Schroecks suggest volunteering as a nonprofit board or committee member, spreading awareness, or simply contacting local nonprofits and offering to help.

“Every time I see Mike (Schroeck), he always asks me the same question: ‘What can I do to help?’” Havala said. “That’s what it’s all about. The reality is, everybody has a lot to offer, and philanthropy can come in a lot of different forms.”

“To be honest, I might not have done any of this on my own,” Mary said. “But Mike inspired me, and we work as a team. We both saw the need in our community, and we’ve just tried to make a little difference. I think, if everybody just did a little, we’d all be better off.”

The Leaders & Legacies series is brought to you by the Legacy Society of DuPage Foundation. Suggestions for future stories can be sent to Michael Trench, vice president for advancement, at michael@dupagefoundation.org.

Interested in learning more about how you can make an impact or create a legacy for your community and favorite causes? Learn more at dupagefoundation.org or contact (630) 665-5556.

DuPage Foundation is located at 3000 Woodcreek Drive, Ste. 310, in Downers Grove, IL 60515.