Hi,
not to go into too much detail on a public forum. In part of a larger deal for real estate that I do have commercial use for, some other buildings will be included that I could either rent out or use for a charitable purpose. It's all or nothing for the deal. I actually contemplated renting them out and using the proceeds to donate to another institution. If this can instead be used to provide young PhD students with a place to live rent-free there is no taxation inbetween, which would be subtracted from what they might receive via another institution.
Honestly, I mostly want to do some good with this in a way that has limited downside, and hope for the general concentration of creative career-starters with some communal infrastructure to result in a great place to live for everybody involved.
From your opening question and follow up, I am not clear on whether you really hope to create an institute, a limited duration retreat, a venue to host such things, or even a housing village and/or coworking space. But, from my US perspective, I might not appreciate the local issues you face.
An academic institute, as I take it, is a sustainable organization that necessarily needs to think about funding and recruitment. It is not just a building or a community, but a host organization to support ongoing fund-seeking activities as well as providing the environment for academic interaction. In the US, these are often soft-money and so the senior researchers are writing proposals and bringing in funding to support themselves and the staff working under them. Overhead taken from such grants and contracts supports the host organization and can circle back to cover gaps in funding or new-business development efforts by the researchers. Other matching funds might be used to help bootstrap an institute (or a strategic expansion), but I think that self-sustainability is the typical operating mode.
Recruitment needs to consider the opportunity costs that your candidates are facing to join you. The "cheap labor" of grad students and postdocs are not available to anybody who wants to pay the same rate as a university. The candidate is expecting to benefit from the prestige, experience, and social network when they take such a position. They need to see a path where this period of sacrifice helps secure their future career. Regular research staff, already in their career, would expect fair compensation. A place with no reputation is higher risk, and probably needs higher compensation to attract the same talent. Also, I think academics are usually a bit risk-averse or otherwise have a different cost-benefit model compared to those who would rush into industry, startups, or entrepreneurial adventures.
I joined an institute in the US which was formed slightly before I was born, and to date I've experienced over 40 percent of its life and mine on the research staff. As I was told, it started as a small set of researchers who identified a problem area and potential funding source. They shopped around for a university willing to be their parent organization, to provide the administrative, HR, and legal support needed to take the money and pursue the research agenda. By the time I joined, almost 25 years later, the division that inherited the agenda of that first group was perhaps only one fifth or less of the total institute in terms staff or funding levels.
