Hi All,
My girlfriend and I recently hosted our first Vegan Charity Dinner here in Vienna, Austria, and we’d like to share the idea in hopes of inspiring more people to organize similar events.
What are Vegan Charity Dinners?
We host monthly dinners where we cook a vegan meal for everyone attending. Each guest contributes roughly the cost of a restaurant meal (around €20 / $20), and we donate 100% of the money collected to highly effective charities—such as those recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators.
At our first dinner, 13 people attended, and we were able to donate €260 to The Humane League. We keep ingredient costs low and cover them ourselves, so the entire donation goes to the selected charity.
How We Motivate People to Attend
We posted in local vegan Facebook groups, WhatsApp groups, subreddits, etc., inviting people to join our WhatsApp group, where we share dates and details of upcoming dinners.
We now have around 50 people in the group, and 5 people have already offered to help with cooking. Almost everyone who attended the first dinner (plus a few new people) has already confirmed they'll join the second one—so people seem to really like the idea. 😊
When people think of vegan activism, they usually picture street protests. But—speaking from experience after hosting and attending hundreds of protests—this kind of activism can be exhausting, often leads to burnout, and its overall effectiveness is, at best, questionable.
We started these dinners as a form of activism that's fun, sustainable, and likely more impactful—especially when the funds go to high-impact animal charities.
It’s also a great way to build local vegan communities and introduce more people to Effective Altruism and promote effective vegan charities.
Just wanted to share how well it went—and we’d be so happy to see more events like this popping up in the future! 😊
This sounds absolutely excellent and something I might well copy!