Photo illustration by ProPublica; source image: Milton Hershey School, MHS 2018 IRS Form 990
Long ago, and to great fanfare, business tycoon Milton Hershey revealed that he had given away his world-famous chocolate company, a gift to the school for poor orphans that he had founded with his wife.
“Well, I have no children — that is, no heirs,” he said in 1923. “So I decided to make the orphan boys of the United States my heirs.”
Hershey died in 1945, leaving a huge estate and a company that would grow to sell more than 250 million candy bars a year. His generosity, however, has created a dilemma for the Milton Hershey School that many charities would envy: too much money.