Has anyone here hosted successful virtual dinners for their community? If yes, what types of tools did you use to set this up?
I have not hosted virtual dinners. At the same time I hosted a dozen offline community dinners and I also hosted a webcast for my community. Overall, I think there is not much difference between online and offline events. One thing to note is that any virtual room has a limited capacity and can have only one active conversation at a time. So to make the experience of the participants positive we need to limit the number of seats based on the length of the event. For example, if you plan a one hour event (60 minutes) and invite 10 people, each of them will have only 6 minutes to talk during that hour.
Most of the virtual event software nowadays have an option to split a bigger group into subgroups during the call. For example, 16 people join a call to discuss a thing together. The host explains the topic and what is needed and then creates four sub rooms and send to the sub rooms the participants for group discussions. So now four independent conversations are possible.
The most critical thing that you need to think about in advance is the topic of the event and who are going to be co-hosts / ice-breakers / moderators for each independent (sub) room if you plan to have them. Most of us are shy and it is hard to start a conversation. Sometimes we go off-topic that can lead to unwanted topics. So any room needs to have a host all the time during the event.