Students on The Whetstone newspaper at Wesley College in Dover, Delaware, combed through their schools Form 990 in April. As a private college, Wesley is exempt from the state’s public records act. So unlike students at public universities, the student newspaper isn’t entitled to administration records. But all private not-for-profit colleges and universities must file a Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service and make those records available to the public. All student newspapers at private institutions should track down their school’s Form 990. It has a ton of information in it on how much money the school raises and spends and where it spends that money. A great place to find your school’s Form 990 is through ProPublica’s NonProfit Explorer search engine.
The Whetstone discovered through the 990 that Wesley College pays Barnes and Noble $400,000 to run the bookstore and Aramark Corp. more than a million for food service.
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