Moreover, did CEA/EVF leadership make the decision to purchase Wytham Abbey because they knew they’d be getting enough money from FTX to make up for the cost?
At the time we committed the funding (November 2021, though the purchase wasn’t completed until April 2022), there was a lot more apparent funding available than there is today, both from Open Phil and from the Future Fund
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With the huge decline in available funds since November 2021, I don’t know whether we’d make this grant again today
Essentially, they thought they were flush with cash from ftx, so they could afford to be more reckless with grant projects, even if they weren’t funded directly from ftx.
The comment also answers your question about the funding source:
Hey, I wanted to clarify that Open Phil gave most of the funding for the purchase of Wytham Abbey (a small part of the costs were also committed by Owen and his wife, as a signal of “skin in the game”)
I don’t know how long major housing purchases take, but 5 months doesn’t sound too unreasonable. Overall the manor purchase seems like a pretty bad idea, but seems unrelated to conflicts of interest.
On the other hand, I completely agree with your concern about Will being on the board of both the group giving out the funds and of the groups receiving the funds. I think this type of behavior, even if meant well, will both cause results to be obviously biased, and provide a huge incentive for bad actors to exploit the movement.
The answer to this is a straightforward “yes, albeit indirectly”, if you look at the comment they made on the subject:
Essentially, they thought they were flush with cash from ftx, so they could afford to be more reckless with grant projects, even if they weren’t funded directly from ftx.
The comment also answers your question about the funding source:
I don’t know how long major housing purchases take, but 5 months doesn’t sound too unreasonable. Overall the manor purchase seems like a pretty bad idea, but seems unrelated to conflicts of interest.
On the other hand, I completely agree with your concern about Will being on the board of both the group giving out the funds and of the groups receiving the funds. I think this type of behavior, even if meant well, will both cause results to be obviously biased, and provide a huge incentive for bad actors to exploit the movement.