SHAKY Foundations

America's most famous charitable family is suddenly making controversial headlines. Can a legacy so large ever avoid drama?

- BENJAMIN SOSKIS

Next time you're on the couch, dutifully working your way through a bag of tor a Own salsa (I, for one, make no apologies), take a moment to reflect that you are also an indirect participant in a fascinating, and fraught, experiment in the relationship between philanthropic power, private interests, and the public good.

Newman's Own products are a supermarket mainstay-each bears some variant of the announcement "100% Profits to Charity" accompanied by the limpid-eyed visage of actor Paul Newman. Newman created the company in 1982. That Christmas he and a friend made a giant batch of an oil-and-vinegar salad dressing and gave it away to neighbors including, as a 2015 Vanity Fair article chronicled, "a young caterer named Martha Stewart, who held a blind taste test [in which] Newman's was voted No. 1" Newman agreed to put his face on the label to sell the bottles, which flew off the shelves of local groceries. Newman and his friend made nearly $1 million and decided that all the profits from Newman's Own-as they called the new company they formed-would go to charity. Over the next several decades, Newman's Own would add pasta sauces, lemonade, popcorn, cookies, and more-giving upward of $500 million to charity, largely to organizations helping children facing serious illness or addressing child nutrition. For most of that time Newman, his family, and a few close friends distributed the funds. But as the actor grew older, he saw a need to professionalize the enterprise. In 2005 he created Newman's Own Foundation, appointing nonprofit consultant Robert Forrester to run it and leaving the food company to the foundation when he died.