Recently - in light of Cynthia Barnett's cover story this month on philanthropy in Florida - I've been thinking more about my trip, particularly what I learned about Milton Hershey, the town's founder, and his vision of a business's responsibility to its community. Hershey, born into a Mennonite farming family, was no overnight success: He failed three times at business and sold a fourth before he started the chocolate company that bears his name in the early 1900s. Whether by virtue of his religious background or the humility born of his failures, Hershey never lost a powerful sense of moral responsibility as he built his company and a town around it. For one, he made sure the town was a real place; the housing he built for his workers was comfortable, two-family brick homes with lawns, not shotgun row houses. He provided a public transportation system, a high-quality school system, a huge park that now includes an amusement complex, a community center, theater, sports arena and stadium. Childless, Hershey and his wife established a school for orphan boys (it now serves 1,100 boys and girls), and he endowed the school with his entire fortune of Hershey company stock. Long after his death, the school's trust fund built a medical center at Penn State, and another Hershey trust makes an annual contribution to the local public school district.
Hershey, of course, was an anomaly, even for his time, and had the advantage of building his town from scratch. And, of course, Florida doesn't need to go all the way to Pennsylvania for examples of enlightened corporate philanthropy. In Orlando, hotelier Harris Rosen has taken on the improvement of the entire Tangelo Park neighborhood, donating more than $3.6 million in the past four years to pay for college scholarships and pre-kindergarten programs. On a statewide level, CSX's Pete Carpenter has shown vision and leadership in Take Stock in Children, a scholarship program for low-income young people.
There are other examples as well, but too few. What's too often missing in Florida are instances in which a business goes beyond writing checks to a range of good causes and takes a step into real community-building. That step involves not just giving when the nonprofits come calling, but focusing attention and resources on an issue that is intimate to the place where the business operates. The Orlando theme parks trumpet their creation of low-paying service jobs, but where's the affordable housing for those workers? Call center operations swarm into Jacksonville, Tampa and now the Panhandle, lured by cheap labor and tax giveaways; what civic institutions have they founded - or even helped shape - since arriving? Economic development types bend over backwards to lure any firm showing a profit margin, but where's the followup after the company sets up shop in the community - 'thank you for coming, now how would you like to help?'
The fact that a business can operate anywhere should not release it from a responsibility to be a part of 'where' it's chosen to be. Rosen told Cynthia Barnett that he believes companies, even those that aren't headquartered here, should put "a certain percentage of the income they are extracting from Florida back. Should it be required? No. Should it be encouraged? Yes."
The 12th century physician and philosopher Maimonides developed a scale to rank the types of charitable giving. At the bottom of the list is giving with resentment, which he considered a humiliation of the receiver. A higher ranking goes to those who give without being asked; at the top of Maimonides' list are those who give their time and money in ways that help teach the recipients how to better themselves. Maimonides was steeped in the Jewish tradition in which "tzedakah'' - charity - is linked linguistically and conceptually with "tzedek'' - justice. Hershey, a Mennonite, may have never heard those words, but he clearly understood the concepts and the linkage. Florida, still defined by out-of-state firms that are too big and in-state firms that are too small, is entering a stage where home-grown Hersheys will begin to emerge. Let's hope they emerge with the same sweet sense of community and charity that Hershey had.