After a year of worry about potential federal funding cuts, a tribal college is getting a boost from one of higher education’s most generous philanthropists.

On Thursday, Little Priest Tribal College in Winnebago, Nebraska, announced that it has received a $5 million unrestricted donation from MacKenzie Scott, who has given more than $1 billion to higher education institutions over the past several years. Scott has targeted her largesse toward historically underfunded institutions that serve high numbers of low-income students. This fall alone, she gave upward of $300 million to historically black colleges and universities and another $50 million to the Native Forward College Fund, though it’s not clear if she has donated to any other individual tribal colleges.

“It felt like Christmas came early,” Manoj Patil, president of Little Priest, told Inside Higher Ed Friday. “MacKenzie Scott’s gift has given us hope and a platform to dream big.”

While a $5 million donation is hardly newsworthy for many of the nation’s research institutions, it’s nothing short of transformative for Little Priest, which has a $4 million endowment, 258 students and a long history of financial hardship.

When the Winnebago tribe chartered the college in 1996, “their dream was to create trade programs,” said Patil, adding that the college didn’t offer any such programs until after he became president in 2018. “Our students deserve state-of-the-art facilities and equipment.”

And with Scott’s gift, the college’s existing plan to triple the size of the campus over the next 25 years—and expand its slate of trade and degree programs—is now on an expedited timeline.

But earlier this year, the outlook for Little Priest and other tribal colleges appeared far less rosy.

Tribal colleges and universities, which serve students from more than 250 federally recognized tribes, rely heavily on federal funding to operate. The government has underfunded those programs for years, and in March President Donald Trump proposed cutting the budget for tribal colleges by 83 percent. While it didn’t come to pass, the proposal panicked the nation’s 35 tribal colleges and universities.

“If there was an 83 percent cut, the majority of the colleges would close—plain and simple—including us,” Patil said. “It would have been a disaster.”

Things began looking up in September, when the Education Department increased its total allocations to tribal colleges by 109 percent for fiscal year 2025–26, giving Little Priest an extra $1 million. Add the $5 million from Scott, and Patil said he went from “wondering how many more days I could keep the college’s doors open to now planning to build a new campus.”

Even before Scott’s donation, a decade of stable leadership and federal pandemic relief money had helped Little Priest develop a plan to spend $60 million to grow the campus footprint over the next 25 years and grow enrollment to more than 300 students by 2035, Patil said.

In May, the college opened a new $6 million, 12,500 square-foot science building. “Until we built that science building, we had one 500 square-foot lab for five programs,” Patil said. Although he’s still not exactly sure why Scott chose to donate to Little Priest in particular, he said he’s “pretty sure she knows how underfunded we are.”

The college then set its sights on raising $10 to $15 million for a new career and technical education building over the next decade. But thanks to Scott’s donation, that may happen in as little as three years—and potentially help the college reach its enrollment goal several years early too.

“This $5 million will help me raise the remaining $7 to $10 million I need for that phase within one year instead of 10 years,” Patil said. “The private foundations in Omaha are really happy that I’ve brought this money to the table, and they’re now optimistic that they’re going to be able to help me raise the remainder.”

While not every tribal college can count on a $5 million gift, Patil hopes Little Priest’s growth will increase awareness of the potential tribal colleges hold.

“If funding stays flat [tribal colleges] will be able to survive,” Patil said. “But if we want to excel—and be on a level playing field with community colleges and universities—then we need way more money.”