The Salvation Army, a charity best known for using bells and kettles to collect spare nickels and dimes at Christmastime, said Tuesday that McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc, left it roughly $1.5 billion when she died last fall.

The gift is the largest single donation that anyone in the worlds of philanthropy and fund-raising could recall -- and more than the Salvation Army received from all sources in 2002. The gift left Commissioner W. Todd Bassett, the Army's national commander, tongue-tied.

"I can't even use the right words," he said with a laugh after he had mistakenly used "million" instead of "billion" several times during an telephone interview. "I struggle with it."

The gift, first reported on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, is likely to have a profound impact on the Salvation Army, a no-frills, faith-based organization that provides services ranging from drug rehabilitation and transitional shelter to after-school programs and disaster relief.

"One of the interesting questions about this is whether it will change public perception of the Salvation Army," said Diana Aviv, president of the Independent Sector, a trade association representing nonprofit organizations. She noted that when Ted Turner gave $1 billion to the United Nations, he raised its visibility and gave it credibility among philanthropists that it had lacked.

The gift is a huge vote of confidence. The Salvation Army is known for keeping tight control of administrative expenses.

Kroc, who was married to Ray Kroc who founded the McDonald's fast food restaurants, handed the Salvation Army the biggest chunk of her fortune, which is estimated at somewhat over $2 billion. Ray Kroc died in 1984.

"It is really an honor to be trusted like that," Bassett said of the bequest.

The Salvation Army, however, also had concerns about the gift's impact, discussing it with legal counsel for several weeks before it agreed to accept the gift on Kroc's terms.

Kroc's orders were that half the gift be divided among the Salvation Army's four territories and spent on building 25 to 30 community centers across the country modeled after the state-of-the-art center she underwrote in San Diego. The rest is to be equally divided among the territories and held in an endowment, the income from which will pay for staff, maintenance, utilities and other expenses at the centers.

But based on the Salvation Army's experience running the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center in San Diego, that will cover only 40 percent to 50 percent of the total operating costs of the centers, Bassett estimated.

The Salvation Army offers a wide variety of programs and services through more than 9,000 centers and with the help of more than 3 million volunteers. It is run by ordained ministers and has a quiet but strong evangelizing component that has often placed it at the center of controversies about public funding.

The group operates 1,400 community centers, and the Kroc center is the most ambitious. Kroc financed it with $92 million, and it includes an indoor skateboard park, a fitness center, a library with Internet access, and soccer, lacrosse and football fields on a 12-acre campus in San Diego.