The purchase of Wytham Abbey was originally justified as a long term investment, when people were still claiming EA wasn't cash constrained. One of the arguments advanced by defenders of the purchase was that the money wasn't lost, merely invested.
Right now, EA is hella funding constrained...
In the last few months, I've seen multiple posts of EA orgs claiming to be so funding constrained they're facing existential risk (disclaimer: I was a trustee of CEEALAR until last month). By the numbers given by those three orgs, 10% of the price of Wytham would be enough to fund them all for several years.
This is to say nothing of all the organisations less urgently seeking funding, the fact that regional groups seem to be getting funding cuts of 40%, of numerous word-of-mouth accounts of people being turned down for funding or not trying to start an organisation because they don't expect to get it, and the fact that earlier this year the EA funds were reportedly suffering some kind of liquidity crisis (and are among those seeking funding now).
Here's a breakdown of the small-medium size orgs who've written 'we are funding constrained' posts on the forum in the last 6 months or so, along with the length of time the sale of Wytham Abbey (at its original £15,000,000 purchase price) could fund them:
| Organisation | Annual budget* | Number of years Wytham Abbey’s sale could fund org | Source |
| EA Poland | £24-48,000 | 312-614 | Link |
| Centre for Enabling EA Learning & Research | £150-£300,000 | 50-100 | Personal involvement |
| AI Safety Camp | £46-246,000 | 48-326 | Link |
| Concentric Policies | £16,500** | 900** | Link |
| Center on Long-Term Risk | £600,000 | 24 | Link |
| EA Germany | £226,000*** | 66 | Link |
| Vida Plena’s 'Group Interpersonal Therapy' project | £159,000 | 94 | Link |
| Happier Lives Institute | £161,000 | 93 | Link |
| Riesgos Catastróficos Globales | £137,000 | 109 | Link |
| Giving What We Can | £1,650,000 | 9 | Link |
| All above organisations excluding GWWC (assuming max of budget ranges) | £1,893,500 | 7.9 | |
| All above organisations including GWWC (assuming max of budget ranges) | £3,543,500 | 4.2 |
* Converted from various currencies
** Their stated ‘funding gap’ for the year. It sounds like that’s their whole planned budget, but isn’t clear
*** They were seeking replacement funding for the 40% shortfall of this, which they’ve now received
... but in five years, EA probably won't need the long-term savings
Wytham Abbey was meant to be a multi-year investment. But though EA is currently funding constrained as heck, the consensus estimate seems to be that within half a decade the movement will have multiple new billionaire donors - so investing for a payoff more than a few years ahead rapidly loses value.
Also (disclaimer again noted) CEEALAR has hosted retreats for Allfed and Orthogonal, and is due to host the forthcoming ML4Good bootcamp, so is already serving a similar function to Wytham Abbey - for a fraction of the operational cost, and less than 2% of the purchase/sale value.
It would also be helpful to know what their cost-benefit analysis actually consisted of, but I asked that they publish it in response to Owen's comment and never heard anything.