Sharing the Pot: Exploring SOUP Participatory Budgeting for Community-Led Funding

How can communities fund local ideas while strengthening trust, democracy, and connection? This session introduces participatory budgeting through the inspiring SOUP model—a simple, community-led approach that transforms small contributions into meaningful local action.

Originally created in Detroit during a period of economic hardship, SOUP demonstrates that communities don’t need large grants or institutions to create change. By gathering around a shared meal, pooling small donations, and collectively deciding which local projects to fund, participants experience democracy as an active, collaborative practice.

The SOUP process is straightforward and accessible. Community members come together to share a meal, hear short presentations from local project leaders, and vote on which initiative will receive the collective fund. Winning projects might include community gardens, repair cafés, youth programs, neighborhood improvements, creative initiatives, or other ideas that strengthen local resilience and wellbeing.

More than a funding mechanism, participatory budgeting builds relationships, encourages civic participation, and keeps resources circulating within the community. It empowers people to move from passive observers to active co-creators of the places where they live, demonstrating that every voice has value and every contribution matters.

Participants will explore how the SOUP model fosters grassroots innovation, collective decision-making, shared responsibility, and community ownership while offering a practical, replicable approach that can be adapted to neighborhoods, organizations, and Transition initiatives around the world.

This session is ideal for community organizers, Transition practitioners, local governments, nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in participatory budgeting, community-led funding, grassroots democracy, local economic resilience, and strengthening community engagement.