I generally disagree with how you think about this—the main thing is “who is accountable?”, and the answer to this is the same for all sub-orgs.
Still, I do agree with this part:
if you think the Wytham Abbey purchase was a bad use of funds and staff time you could hold it against Owen for driving it, the other EVF trustees for agreeing to take it under their umbrella, and Open Phil for funding it. But downgrading your estimate of CEA’s leadership (Max and team) or the other EVF-hosted projects (80k, GWWC, Funds, …) makes much less sense.
the main thing is “who is accountable?”, and the answer to this is the same for all sub-orgs.
Accountable to whom, though? The board is ultimately legally accountable (for things like whether or not the entity is fulfilling its charitable purposes), but this is a pretty weak kind of accountability in most cases.
I’d guess that suborg leadership is probably more accountable to funders, for example.
(My actual position here is intermediate between yours & Jeff’s.)
I generally disagree with how you think about this—the main thing is “who is accountable?”, and the answer to this is the same for all sub-orgs.
Still, I do agree with this part:
Accountable to whom, though? The board is ultimately legally accountable (for things like whether or not the entity is fulfilling its charitable purposes), but this is a pretty weak kind of accountability in most cases.
I’d guess that suborg leadership is probably more accountable to funders, for example.
(My actual position here is intermediate between yours & Jeff’s.)