Omaha Sun Exposes Boys Town's $209 Million Secret Fortune While Claiming Poverty in Fundraising Appeals

The Omaha Sun publishes a bombshell investigation on March 30, 1972, revealing that Boys Town, the iconic Catholic charity founded by Father Edward Flanagan, is sitting on a $209 million endowment—making it richer than any Nebraska company and ranking approximately 230th in Fortune magazine’s 1970 list of top-500 industrials—even as it continues nationwide fundraising campaigns portraying the organization as operating in Dickensian poverty. The investigation, led by managing editor Paul Williams and publisher Stanford Lipsey, is directly enabled by investor Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway had purchased the Sun Newspapers in 1968. Buffett tips off the newspaper to newly available IRS Form 990 filings and even contributes unpublished investment analysis showing Boys Town’s portfolio returns were “about half what it should have been” while risk was “about twice what it should have been.”

The Sun’s reporting reveals that by the end of 1971, Boys Town’s population had dropped to only 750 residents while its endowment had risen to approximately $215,000 per boy—an astronomical ratio that exposes the disconnect between the charity’s actual mission and its aggressive fundraising operations. Despite this massive wealth, Boys Town refused to answer journalists’ questions about its finances before the investigation, forcing reporters to rely on federal 990 tax forms that were more difficult to obtain in the early 1970s. The charity’s leadership, under Monsignor Nicholas H. Wegner who succeeded Father Flanagan after his 1948 death, had suggested ending fundraising if the endowment grew further, yet instead continued “timelessly salable appeals focusing on Flanagan’s legacy and needy wards” while spending heavily on fundraising operations.

The investigation earns the Omaha Sun the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting—the first Pulitzer awarded to a weekly newspaper and the last Pulitzer won by any Nebraska newspaper. Public outrage following the expose forces reforms at Boys Town, though the charity remains one of the richest in the country with an endowment exceeding $900 million by 2015 and total assets of $1.76 billion. Despite receiving estimated annual tax breaks of $11 million for being tax-exempt, Boys Town continues spending almost as much on fundraising as on youth programs while serving far fewer children than its vast resources could support. The scandal exemplifies how tax-exempt nonprofit status can be exploited for institutional enrichment rather than charitable mission, with aggressive fundraising operations creating massive wealth accumulation even as the organization’s actual service to vulnerable populations declines—a pattern of financial capture enabled by weak regulatory oversight of nonprofit organizations claiming tax-exempt charitable status.