But sustaining interest is hard. Most people come to dinner because they know someone else who's going. So getting key members out has been vital. But people are selfish and even though it's only fortnightly they'll go to wherever there's potentially the most people to party with. About a fifth of our attendees come to hear the specific NGO we've got presenting.

People are also selfish when it comes to giving. Envelopes thin out around Christmas time and I'm always disappointed at the proportionality of people's priorities. An expat attendee put 15 yuan ($2.2) in the envelope at our last dinner, having earlier spent 500 yuan for an hour with the hair stylist around the corner.

We've considered trying to bring a corporation or chief executive to each dinner, to bulk up the takings. That might change the informal get together of friends if we've got to entertain a CEO whom perhaps none of us know. And corporate types don't always deliver. It's a slog to get cash from companies to support the charitable enterprises of the Irish Network China, of which I'm a member. Our flagship annual St Patrick Ball usually delivers 100,000 yuan ($14,300) for a Hebei-based charity working on AIDS. That's only once a year, and depends on ticket sales covering the costs of the Ball.

To jazz up the action and fatten the donation envelope for our chosen charity, we started auctioning items from the NGOs. It started when the representative from Morning Tears brought some t-shirts, chopsticks and some other thank-you gifts for us. Not knowing how to distribute them we sold them instead, and put the 2,000-yuan ($286) proceeds into the envelope for the charity.

Auctions are interactive and they're fun when two people want something bad enough and guilt is assuaged by knowing however much you pay it's all going to charity. But there are limits too; generous foreigners fighting each other in 10-yuan ($1.43) increments all the way to 400 yuan ($57) for a painting by a migrant school pupil actually turned locals off, worried they'd be pressured into contributing.

So getting a charitable endeavor off the ground is not as easy as it should be. You have to be a bully without bullying, you need to be consistent, you need to be transparent, and you need to get locals as well as expats to your table. And this isn't even my day job!