Why Another Charity?

If you take a long-term perspective then it is reasonable to assert that you can expect to achieve more with your money if you were to invest it in the stock market. That is why most people who are saving for retirement do this.

If you are not familiar with the stock market, then you might like to quickly go to the Stocks, Index Funds & Dividends section of this website and then return here.

Table 4 in the section How is it Unending? of this website indicates that it is reasonable to expect, on average, a stock market investment to produce between 6 and 7% (after allowing for inflation) on an ongoing basis. In retirement, ‘the 4% rule’ is often referred to, which is a similar concept but more cautious because the stock market is very violate. An even safer way of taking money from a stock market is to only take the dividends, which for the UK All Share Index is currently around 3%, for the UK FTSE 100 Index is currently around 4% and for shares in National Grid is around 5%.

This charity invests any money given to it in the stock market, and gives the dividends from that stock market investment to charity. Another reason this charity only gives the dividends (rather than 4%+) is that it keeps the paperwork (and therefore overheads), and discussions/ decisions to a minimum.

If all the charity's money was invested into the National Grid, it is logical to expect that every 20 years it will paid out the full value of the initial investment, at a rate of 5% per year. Furthermore, as the National Grid adjusts in prices with inflation, it is logical to expect that the 5% would be adjusted for inflation.

Our Lord and Saviour may return in the next 20-years, or there could be some world disaster those financial impact is far greater than the two World Wars, etc.; in which case this charity’s strategy may have not been the best one. However, if things carry on for 20 or more years, roughly as they have for the past 150-years, it is expected that this charity will enable a greater impact for the Kingdom of Heaven than if the money had been simply given to a charity that spent all the money immediately.

The only charities that are known to enable this type of ongoing giving have significant overhead costs, e.g. 3.5% initial fee and 1.5% ongoing fee (0.5% to the charity and 1% to the investment fund); whereas Unending Light has zero initial fee and zero ongoing fee (if invested in individual shares, or less than 0.1% if invested in a fund). Hence, averaging the initial fee over a 10-year period, Unending Light would be able to give about a third more per year due to its lack of overheads.