With all the grumbling and grousing I do here, I thought I'd share a feel-good story I happened upon last night. It's about the Hershey Company. Specifically, it's about a secret arrangement the founder of the company made to help orphans. As revealed on Wikipedia [5]: (with some boldface emphasis by me):
Unable to have children of his own, Milton S. Hershey founded the Milton Hershey School in 1909 for orphans. In 1918, Milton S. Hershey and his wife, Catherine Hershey, donated
all of their considerable wealth, of around 60 million dollars, to the boarding school upon Catherine Hershey's death. The Hershey Trust Company is now the largest shareholder and beneficiary to the School. Before his death, Milton Hershey ensured the school would live on by donating 30% of all future Hershey profits to the school. Due to this generous donation by America's largest chocolate company, MHS now has over 7 billion dollars in assets, making it one of the richest schools in the world. Today, the Milton Hershey School provides free education, health care, counseling and a friendly home to 2000 orphans in financial need.
The school's programs include sports, arts, religious studies, sciences, math, language and many other subjects. School colors are gold and brown. Students must wear a uniform to class provided to them by the School to encourage equality. Their admissions is primarily based on age and financial need for the orphans. The school also provides "House Parents", which are hired couples, paid to take care of and nurture the students. The school's "fellowship" project provides students with Hershey employee visits to build long lasting relationships and provide career counseling. Additionally, the school is located in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a city created by Milton Hershey himself. The city offers security, a church, a post office and other services for the students. Many of its designs resemble Hershey chocolate products, such as the Hershey Kisses light posts. Most notably perhaps is the fact that Mr. Milton Hershey prohibited The Hershey Company from using the School as an advertisement or marketing strategy. The school's primary goal is to provide young orphans with the skills necessary to support themselves and their families in the future.
Isn't that cool? Can you imagine, say, Steve Jobs allocating 30% of Apple's profits - - forever - - to a given charitable cause? And, the real kicker - - to expressly forbid the company from exploiting this generosity for marketing or advertising purposes?
Here in Palo Alto, for instance, there is the Ronald McDonald house. It's a very well-funded hospital for very sick children. I think it's terrific that McDonald's funds this (setting aside the fact that the food they've given the country the past fifty years hasn't exactly been a boon for good health), but when I see all the posters of Ronald McDonald given kids with, say, cancer a big Ronald hug [6], my cynicism meter does go "ping" a bit.
But never did I suspect, with all the Hershey's I've bought over the years to create my award-winning s'mores, that a big chunk of the company's profits during its entire history were causing to this worthy cause. Mr. Hershey must have been a good egg.
