OP gave some reasoning for their views on their recent blog post:
Another place where I have changed my mind over time is the grant we gave for the purchase of Wytham Abbey, an event space in Oxford.
We initially agreed to help fund that purchase as part of our effort to support the growth of the community working to reduce global catastrophic risks (GCRs). The original idea presented to us was that the space could serve as a hub for workshops, retreats, and conferences, to cut down on the financial and logistical costs of hosting large events at private facilities. This was pitched to us at a time when FTX was making huge commitments to the GCR community, which made resources appear more abundant and lowered our own bar. Since its purchase, the space has gotten meaningful use for community events and gatherings. But with the collapse of FTX, our bar for this kind of work rose, and the original grant would no longer have risen to the level where we would want to provide funding.
Because this was a large asset, we agreed with Effective Ventures ahead of time that we would ask them to sell the Abbey if the event space, all things considered, turned out not to be sufficiently cost-effective. We recently made that request; funds from the sale will be distributed to other valuable projects they run.
While this grant retroactively came in below our new bar, I donât think that alone is a big problem. If you didnât make some grants that look less attractive when the expected funding drops by half, you werenât spending aggressively enough before.
But I still think I personally made a mistake in not objecting to this grant back when the initial decision was made and I was co-CEO. My assessment then was that this wasnât a major risk to Open Philanthropy institutionally, so it wasnât my place to try to stop it. I missed how something that could be parodied as an âeffective altruist castleâ would become a symbol of EA hypocrisy and self-servingness, causing reputational harm to many people and organizations who had nothing to do with the decision or the building.
This is a tough balance to strike because I think itâs easy for organizations to be paralyzed by concerns over reputational risk, rendering them unable to make nearly any decisions. And I think a core part of our hits-based giving philosophy is being able to make major bets that can fail outright, even in embarrassing ways. I want to maintain that openness to risk when the upside justifies it. But this example has made me want to raise our bar for things that could end up looking profligate or irresponsible to the detriment of broader communities weâre associated with.
OP gave some reasoning for their views on their recent blog post: