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.
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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.
Bob Fernandez of The Inquirer and Charlotte Keith of Spotlight PA
This article was produced in partnership with Spotlight PA and The Philadelphia Inquirer, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. Sign up for Spotlight PA’s free newsletters here.
For over a year, lawyer Bob Heist, then-chairman of the Milton Hershey School’s board, says he sought internal financial records detailing the spending history of the $17 billion charity, which has a mission to educate low-income students for free.
He now says he is being denied records he needs as a board member charged with overseeing the Pennsylvania boarding school’s operations, and earlier this month he sued the school to obtain the documents. It’s an extremely unusual step for a sitting board member, taken against an extremely unusual institution: The Milton Hershey School is the wealthiest precollege educational institution in the United States. It controls 80% of the Hershey Co. candy giant’s voting s
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For over a year, lawyer Bob Heist, then-chairman of the Milton Hershey School’s board, says he sought internal financial records detailing the spending history of the $17 billion charity, which has a mission to educate low-income students for free.
He now says he is being denied records he needs as a board member charged with overseeing the Pennsylvania boarding school’s operations, and earlier this month he sued the school to obtain the documents. It’s an extremely unusual step for a sitting board member, taken against an extremely unusual institution: The Milton Hershey School is the wealthiest pre-college educational institution in the United States. It controls 80% of the Hershey Co. candy giant’s voting shares, and reaps profits from the sale of Hershey chocolate bars, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and SkinnyPop-brand snacks sold in thousands of U.S. retail stores.