This view helps explain why some activities that help others aren’t celebrated as acts of charity. One such unsung activity is giving to people in the far future. Instead of donating money now, we might put it in a trust and let the magic of compound interest work for 50 or 500 years, stipulating how it should be put to use after it’s grown to a much larger size. These have been called “Methuselah trusts,” the most famous of which were set up by Benjamin Franklin.
