[2] It provided banking services and mortgages to residents of Hershey and the surrounding Derry Township.

In 1925, Hershey Trust established Hershey National Bank as a subsidiary to handle its commercial banking business, allowing the parent company to focus on the growing demands of managing the school trust.

[11] One particular issue was the purchase of the Wren Dale Golf Course, in which the Hershey Trust overpaid for the property, to the benefit of board members who were both owners of the Wren Dale Golf Course and on the Hershey Trust board.

[16][17] In May 2016, the state attorney general asked the company to remove three members from the ten-person board.

At about the same time, in an unrelated investigation, John Estey, former chief of staff to Governor Ed Rendell and a high-ranking executive of the company, was charged with wire fraud, having pocketed $13,000 that an FBI sting operation had given to him in an investigation into illegal lobbying of legislators.

[25] This trust was established in 1945 upon Milton Hershey's death, endowed with his remaining fortune of $900,000, for the benefit of the Derry Township School District.