THE CHARITY GALA DINNER

The Charity Gala Dinner is an evening in mid-November in a private room in New York, taken for the night: a dinner in aid of one cause, chosen by the membership for the year, at which members bid on lots given by other members rather than by companies, and members pay what they bid directly to the cause.

It exists because New York has long given its evenings to its causes. The Charity Ball of 1867, the New-York Times wrote, “was originated in benevolence”, and was “the social event of the season.”

The Benefit

The New York Nursery and Child’s Hospital was founded on 2 May 1854 by Mary Ann Delafield DuBois and Ana R. Emmit, first as “The Nursery for the Children of Poor Women”. Its Charity Ball was held each year at the Academy of Music, on East 14th Street, a hall of four thousand seats opened that October, which gave opera and also “political rallies, charity balls and science and industry fairs.” In 1867 the ball was under the management of 244 directors, and people who usually kept away from such festivities would “break through the ten-barred fence of custom” to attend it.

There was a lesson in the other kind. On 10 February 1897 the Bradley Martins gave a ball at the Waldorf Hotel that cost them $369,000. Its stated aim was to stimulate trade in the depression; preachers and editors attacked it, and it was “a social triumph but created negative publicity.”

The twentieth century made the benefit a fixture. Cardinal Francis Spellman founded the Al Smith Dinner in 1945, a white tie dinner for Catholic charities for children, held by the Archbishop of New York on the third Thursday of October; it raised $3.9 million in 2018, and since Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 both presidential candidates have come to it in election years to give speeches “similar to a roast”. Claude Philippe, banquet manager of the Waldorf, and Elsa Maxwell gave the first April in Paris Ball on 9 April 1952. “We charge the most, give the most, and make the most,” Philippe said. Its proceeds went to more than twenty American charities, with fifteen to twenty per cent to French ones, the raffle ran to jewels, furs and cars, and once it moved to October it “often marked the start of the US fall social season.”

Eleanor Lambert founded the Costume Institute Benefit in 1948. “The first gala was a dinner, with tickets at 50 dollars each,” and for its first decades it “was simply one of many annual benefits held for New York charitable institutions.” In 2026 a seat cost $100,000, and the evening raised a record $42 million.

The auction came with it. Daniel Boulud’s game dinner of 2010 closed with a live auction, at which a Thanksgiving dinner served on an engraved roaster sold for $1,000; the American Museum of Natural History’s gala of 5 December 2024 had its lots called by Sarah Friedlander of Christie’s.

The Evening

One evening in mid-November, in a private room in New York taken for the night. The Court keeps no house of its own.

One cause, chosen by the membership for the year.

The lots are given by members, not by companies, and members bid on them.

Members pay what they bid directly to the cause, which gives its own receipt. The Court collects and holds none of it.

What Is Asked

Black tie. Nothing is published for a private room; benefit dinners in New York keep to it, as at the Guggenheim’s International Gala, where the guests came “in black tie”, and the Court does the same.

Nobody is pitched at the table.

The Places

The number of places and the sum are stated in the invitation.

The Court’s Game Dinner is held at the beginning of the month.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.