In anticipation of our next dinner several people (newcomers especially raised concerns about money related issues, so I would like to explain our attitude to money in general.

First of all, this is a non-profit site. When I say "non-profit" it is rather a declaration of our priorities, than official recognition by tax authorities, for example.
Non-profit does not mean anti-commercial. Non-profit does not mean that organization does not make any money. American Red Cross had
9 billion dollars in revenue last year and it is a well known non-profit organization.

What I want to say is that we are not actively trying to capitalize on this website and a few activities that we organize ourselves. But at the same time we do not feel that it would be fair to expect for us to absorb costs that are related to site operations.

Costs of maintaining the website itself are miniscule, so it is not a big deal. Dinners are more involving in this respect. If we book a place for 50 people and only 45 show up, sometimes we have no other choice but to pay for 5 missing people. Occasionally people forget to pay for something they ordered on top of the menu like extra wine or drinks. Person who replies to emails and spends his time organizing the dinner also should be reasonably compensated.

It is a continuing operation and losses can arise not at the time of a particular dinner but before or after it. If another dinner happens to fall on a rainy day when people would rather stay at home, we can be easily down for a few hundred dollars. So, to compensate potential risks and our expenses we will be setting up prices of the dinners about 15% on top of actual price of the food. This amount is on top of discounted group price, so it may be cheaper than what you would pay going to the same restaurant by yourself. To be sure about it you'd better contact the restaurant directly, since everything is getting more and more expensive and many websites are not updated regularly.

We have provided a detailed list of our expenses on a few occasions and we will try to continue doing that in the future. Our goal is to have a zero balance by the end of the year 2008. If there will be any money left at the end of the year, we will donate all of it to a recognized charity organization.

Thanks for that Igor, I have noticed here huge inflatiion of late and 50 pesos for a meal like that with drinks seems cheap these days.
I was In Palermo the other night and had a simple meal with a mineral water and it came to 47 pesos .
Good luck with it all as I am leaving for home in the next week and unfortunately will not be able to attend,