For those who like their meals to come with a side of indiscreet chatter, WikiLeaks may have an appetising opportunity.

The not-for-profit organisation is offering eight people the chance to dine with founder Julian Assange to raise funds for its work. While Assange is said to often go long periods without eating, he is unlikely to be short of conversation given that he has become one of the most recognisable media figures over the past year and is rarely shy of offering an opinion.

The places are up for auction on eBay's UK site and bidding for one place had reached £620 on Wednesday. It says 100% of the final sale price will support WikiLeaks.

Slovenian Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek will also be at the three-hour lunch at "one of London's finest restaurants" on 2 July. The pair will be giving a talk at the Troxy, east London, later the same day, "discussing the impact of WikiLeaks on the world and what it means for the future".

WikiLeaks is dependent on public donations. It suffered a blow when companies including Mastercard, Visa and PayPal stopped processing payments citing illegality after the site leaked US state department cables. But a board member of Germany's Wau Holland Foundation, one of the whistle-blowing platform's main funding channels, said in December last year that despite the blocking of payment channels, funding was booming and that in two-and-a-half months it had collected more than €900,000 (£790,000) on behalf of WikiLeaks.

Assange is on bail in Britain as he fights extradition to Sweden on allegations of sexual misconduct against two women. He denies the allegations and claims they are politically motivated. A separate fund is paying for his defence.

US authorities are investigating whether WikiLeaks broke the law by releasing thousands of secret government documents.

Earlier this month, Assange was awarded the 2011 Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism. The annual prize is awarded to a journalist "whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda".

Zizek, international director of Birbeck Institute for the Humanities, described Assange as "a real-life counterpart to the Joker in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight" in an essay for the London Review of Books, adding that the Joker was "the only figure of truth in the film".