alt Hacker News> $25-30M per year is a lot for a non-profit
First, whether IA or any other large non-profit/charity. When you are in the double-digit/triple-digit multi-million bracket, you are no longer a non-profit/charity. You are in effect a business with a non-profit status.
Whether IA or any other large entity, when you get to that size, you don't benefit from the "oh they are a poor non-profit" mindset IMHO.
To be able to spend $25-30M a year, you clearly have to have a solid revenue stream both immediate and in the pipeline, that's Finances 101. Therefore you are in a privileged and enviable position that small non-profits can only dream of.
Second, I would be curious to know how much of that is of their own doing.
By that I mean, its sure cute to be located in the former Christian Science church on Funston Avenue in San Francisco’s Richmond District.
But they could most likely save a lot of money if they were located in a carrier-neutral facility.
For example, instead of paying for expensive external fiber lines (no doubt multiple, due to redundancy), they would have large amounts of capacity available through simple cross-connects.
Similar on energy. Are they benefiting from the same economies of scale that a carrier-neutral facility does ?
I am not saying the way they are doing it is wrong. I'm just genuinely curious to know what premium they are paying for doing it like they are.
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This seems like a lot of zesty made-up assumptions.
And a lot of non-profits would be very very surprised to hear that once you cross the threshold of $9,999,999 costs, you are a business.
Probably the advantages of its location outweigh the extra costs for the IA. Having your datacentre sited on land and in a building you own, behind a non-shared front door, has legal advantages similar to the ones which drive organisations to keep their data centres on-premises. A distinctive location in a nice area of San Francisco probably helps to keep cultivating the goodwill of the SV tech industry and of local and state politicians. It's also an advantage to be within easy walking distance in a neighbourhood where people like the IA and would be inclined to go there and protest if government forces rolled up and started pushing their way inside. To be sure, I presume that 300 Funston Ave. also being a very pleasant workplace for senior IA people has something to do with why the Archive moved there and remains there; but remaining there seems justifiable for other reasons.