(A nit, but the quote was from the body of the post, not a comment on the post.) A decent subthread on this on the EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.or

(A nit, but the quote was from the body of the post, not a comment on the post.) A decent subthread on this on the EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/why-did-cea-buy-wytham-abbey?commentId=xa84YyhuAyh9u2ko5 https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/... The money came from a grant from OpenPhil for the purpose. EVF didn't publish a cost-benefit analysis my knowledge, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation [https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/why-did-cea-buy-wytham-abbey?commentId=3yeffQWcRFvmeteqc https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xof7iFB3uh8Kc53bG/...] suggests it would plausibly cost £1~2M a year to hire similar venues. That said, whether it's worth it to purchase a dedicated venue depends a lot on how much use the venue actually gets. Ultimately, "we were getting ripped off" is a financial judgement made by CEA. I don't think it really has a great deal to do with the wider effective altruist movement tbh.