Greenwich Hospital is a unique Crown Royal Navy Charity founded by Royal Charter in 1694, to support retired, wounded & needy RN personnel & their widows & to educate their children. It occupied the current Old Royal Naval College site in Greenwich until 1869. As a Crown body which operates as a charity, it sits outside the Charities Acts & regulation by the Charity Commission. Since 1964, the sole trustee of GH has been the Secretary of State for Defence, who is supported in his trustee duties by the Admiralty Board. The Director of GH is responsible day-to-day for the proper & effective conduct & executive management of the Hospital in accordance with the spirit & objects of the Charter & the relevant statutes. A Non-Executive Advisory Board, Advisory Panel & specialist sub-committees offer professional & expert guidance in a range of fields and play a key role in steering the work of GH. Today, the charity supports serving & retired personnel of the Royal Navy & Royal Marines & their families through a wide range of charity work. In 2019-2020, GH spent nearly £6m on charity projects & will have supported some 270,000 beneficiaries from 2018-2021. To support its charitable objectives the Hospital seeks to maximise the return on its investments to meet its long-term commitments. These include regular charitable payments & grants, both direct & through other naval & service charities to serving & former navy personnel & their families in need; bursaries for eligible seafaring children at the Royal Hospital School (founded by the Hospital in 1712 & still legally part of GH’s responsibility); & sheltered housing for older naval veterans & spouses in Greenwich, Portsmouth & Plymouth. With a view to meeting the increasingly complex needs of both serving & retired sailors, GH looks to maximise its charitable output by careful management of its income & assets, both quoted investments & property portfolio (in Greenwich, Northumberland, and Suffolk) value total c£400m.