I've recently made an update to our Announcement on the future of Wytham Abbey noting that as of today, the property has now formally been sold. As was envisioned, proceeds from the sale will be allocated to high-impact charities, including EV’s operations.
I have made an edit to this post, noting that as of today, 11 November 2025, the sale of Wytham Abbey has been formally completed. As was envisioned, proceeds from the sale will be allocated to high-impact charities, including EV’s operations.
The sale price of £6 million was in line with the final guide price, which we had revised earlier this year on the advice of Savills and property market experts at Knight Frank, to reflect the broad market conditions for country estates.
Though this represents a lower price than was originally paid, EV ultimately determined that rather than hold the property until market conditions improve, implicitly speculating on where the price might go in coming years, it would be better to devote all of our energy and resources to our core mission of enabling impactful, altruistic projects.
We appreciate the thoughtful engagement the project received during EV’s tenure as owner, particularly from its main funder. We agree with this summary:
We funded a project, the project team overall did a good job running it from an operational perspective (based on the impression I got during my evaluation), and then events beyond the control of anyone involved meant they were no longer above our funding bar.
Your guess that Zach's post refers to both EV US and EV UK, whereas the charity commission only looked at EV UK is correct - and this explains the difference in amounts
I agree that the full report gives a more rounded picture than my quick summary - but we're pleased with the final conclusions, and the improvements EV has made
I have made an edit to this post, saying that since this announcement, we have decided that we will use some of the proceeds on Effective Venture's general costs. I consider EV to be a high-impact charity.
I've recently made an update to our Announcement on the future of Wytham Abbey, saying that since this announcement, we have decided that we will use some of the proceeds on Effective Venture's general costs.
The Charity commission didn’t encourage us to offboard projects, and we aren’t off-boarding projects because of anything that we anticipate the Charity Commission might do.
I've heard people express the idea that top of funnel community building is not worth the effort, as EA roles often get 100+ applicants.
I think this is misguided. Great applicants may get a job after only a few applications. Poor applicants may apply to many many jobs without getting a job. As a result you should expect poor applicants to be disproportionately well represented in the applicant pool - hence the pure number of applicants isn't that informative. This point is weakened by recruitment systems being imperfect, but as long as you believe recruitment systems have some ability to select people, then I think this take holds.
I'm really only making a claim about a specific argument, not whether or not top of funnel community building is a good idea on the margin.
I think that's the first time I've seen this written as clearly as here, and I don't really like it or agree
Apologies, I think I should be clear that when I say "the messaging changed" I'm just describing what I believed happened, not that I think it was a good thing. I agree that some people aren't interested in AIS, or aren't the right fit, but can still make the world substantially better. I do however think that we should openly say "we think AIS is an important cause area" and should spend less time arguing why that isn't a weird thing to think.
I also get the impression that you forget to mention the value of community for keeping strong values, and sticking to your plan
I agree that this is a value of community building, but it seems similarly relevant for explicitly longtermist community building and broad EA community building?
If these judgment calls are being made and underpin the work of CEA’s groups team, that seems very relevant for the EA movement.
I agree. We're working on increasing transparency - expect to see more posts on this in the future
Do I interpret your comment correctly, that the CEA groups team does have an internal qualitative ranking, but you are not able to share it publicly?
I'm not 100% clear what you mean here, so I've taken a few guesses, and answered all of them
Do we have a qualitative ranking of the grants we've made: No. We are interested in making the "fund/don't fund" decision - and as such a qualitative ranking within everyone we've funded doesn't help us. We do have a list of the funding decisions we've made, and notes on the reasons why these decisions were made. These often involve qualitative judgements. We will sometimes look back at past decisions, to help us calibrate.
Do we have a qualitative ranking of common actions community members might take: No. We don't have an X such that we could say "<job category> is worth X% of <job category>, holding 'ability' constant" for common EA jobs. Plausibly we should have something like this, but even this would need to be applied carefully - as different organisations are bottlenecked by different things.
Do you have heuristics that help you compare different community building outcomes: Yes. These are different between our programs, as it depends on how a program is attempting to help. E.g., in virtual programs admissions, we aren't able to applicants on outcomes, as for many participants, it is one of their first interactions with EA. As I mentioned above, I want us to increase transparency on this.
I also want to emphasise that an important component in our grantmaking is creating healthy intellectual scenes.
I've recently made an update to our Announcement on the future of Wytham Abbey noting that as of today, the property has now formally been sold. As was envisioned, proceeds from the sale will be allocated to high-impact charities, including EV’s operations.
I have made an edit to this post, noting that as of today, 11 November 2025, the sale of Wytham Abbey has been formally completed. As was envisioned, proceeds from the sale will be allocated to high-impact charities, including EV’s operations.
The sale price of £6 million was in line with the final guide price, which we had revised earlier this year on the advice of Savills and property market experts at Knight Frank, to reflect the broad market conditions for country estates.
Though this represents a lower price than was originally paid, EV ultimately determined that rather than hold the property until market conditions improve, implicitly speculating on where the price might go in coming years, it would be better to devote all of our energy and resources to our core mission of enabling impactful, altruistic projects.
We appreciate the thoughtful engagement the project received during EV’s tenure as owner, particularly from its main funder. We agree with this summary:
Your guess that Zach's post refers to both EV US and EV UK, whereas the charity commission only looked at EV UK is correct - and this explains the difference in amounts
I agree that the full report gives a more rounded picture than my quick summary - but we're pleased with the final conclusions, and the improvements EV has made
I have made an edit to this post, saying that since this announcement, we have decided that we will use some of the proceeds on Effective Venture's general costs. I consider EV to be a high-impact charity.
I've recently made an update to our Announcement on the future of Wytham Abbey, saying that since this announcement, we have decided that we will use some of the proceeds on Effective Venture's general costs.
The Charity commission didn’t encourage us to offboard projects, and we aren’t off-boarding projects because of anything that we anticipate the Charity Commission might do.
I've heard people express the idea that top of funnel community building is not worth the effort, as EA roles often get 100+ applicants.
I think this is misguided. Great applicants may get a job after only a few applications. Poor applicants may apply to many many jobs without getting a job. As a result you should expect poor applicants to be disproportionately well represented in the applicant pool - hence the pure number of applicants isn't that informative. This point is weakened by recruitment systems being imperfect, but as long as you believe recruitment systems have some ability to select people, then I think this take holds.
I'm really only making a claim about a specific argument, not whether or not top of funnel community building is a good idea on the margin.
H/T Amarins for nudging me to post this
Apologies, I think I should be clear that when I say "the messaging changed" I'm just describing what I believed happened, not that I think it was a good thing. I agree that some people aren't interested in AIS, or aren't the right fit, but can still make the world substantially better. I do however think that we should openly say "we think AIS is an important cause area" and should spend less time arguing why that isn't a weird thing to think.
I agree that this is a value of community building, but it seems similarly relevant for explicitly longtermist community building and broad EA community building?
I agree. We're working on increasing transparency - expect to see more posts on this in the future
I'm not 100% clear what you mean here, so I've taken a few guesses, and answered all of them
I also want to emphasise that an important component in our grantmaking is creating healthy intellectual scenes.