As of right now, our next event will be on Sunday, September 15th from 4-6pm at American Family’s DreamBank-1 N. Pinckney St.

Please continue to watch this post for an update, when tickets will go on sale, and other information between now and then.

If you would like to subscribe to our Mailing List please fill out our Contact Form and write “Please add me to your Mailing List” in the space provided.

If you would like to submit your project to possibly present at an upcoming Madison SOUP event, please fill out the Project Proposal Form

We had a near capacity event, and with many of the tickets going within the last 24 hours of ticket sales again!
We served Spring Pea & Mint and French Spring Soups to all 55 attendees. If you would like to make these again please refer to the SOUP Recipe page
The 4-6pm time slot seemed to work perfectly as many were able to come and were hungry, and I was able to be done washing dishes before midnight ;

February’s winner, Joe from the Madison Sweet Potato Project, gave us a great update on how the SOUP funds were able to purchase slips/seedlings for participants.

We were suppose to have 2 presentations, but 1 of the presenters didn’t show (they’re welcome to resubmit their project to present at a future event) so it made the voting SUPER easy for everyone! Terri from Gardens for Empowerment  talked about how community gardens create beauty and are helping at-risk youth in our community. We were able to award the group with $592!

We look forward to hearing an update from Terri at the next Madison SOUP event to be held tentatively on Sunday, September 15th at American Family’s DreamBank-1 N. Pinckney St on the Square.

I will send out a reminder closer to the September event when tickets will go on sale. Otherwise you are always able to submit your project via the Project Proposal Form until 11:59pm the Tuesday prior to the event (in this case until Tuesday, September 10th)

Thanks again to all who came out and make our events a success! Also, a big thank you to our presenters, Sector67, and Sector67 members who help get the space ready before the event, help with food preparation and running the entrance, and cleaning up after each of our events!

I appreciate the help, advice, and suggestions everyone gives me and wouldn’t be able to hold these events without any of you! Feel free to email comments, suggestions, or questions to Heather at madisonsoup@gmail.com

We had a near capacity event, and with many of the tickets going within the last 24 hours of ticket sales we were worried we wouldn’t have enough food. But in the end there was enough Spiced Carrot & Ginger and Vegan Mushroom soups to feed all 53 attendees.
Attendees came earlier than past SOUP events, and many attendees told us that they enjoyed the earlier time of 2-4pm instead of the regular 6-8pm.

December’s winner, Meg Rothstein, gave us a great update on how the SOUP funds were able to purchase 40 notebooks for the Creative Writing Class at the Madison Day Shelter, and the remaining money was used towards their New Year’s Day Reception which hosted 175 people.

We also had 2 great presentations by Kristin H. of Art in All the Wrong Places; and Joe M. for Madison Sweet Potato Project.

The winner was Madison Sweet Potato Project who will use the $392 towards sweet potato seeds to turn into slips, distribute to community members, and half of all sweet potato crops raised from those seeds will go to an area Food Pantry.  Joe told us that each Sweet Potato Seed costs $0.12 and with the $392 raised from Madison SOUP they can purchase 3267 seeds!

We look forward to hearing an update from Joe at the next Madison SOUP event to be held on Sunday, April 14th.

You are always able to submit your project via the Project Proposal Form until 11:59pm the Tuesday prior to the event (in this case until Tuesday, April 2nd)

Thanks again to all who came out and make our events a success! Also, a big thank you to our presenters, Sector67, and Sector67 members who help get the space ready before the event, help with food preparation and running the entrance, and cleaning up after each of our events!

I appreciate the help, advice, and suggestions everyone gives me and wouldn’t be able to hold these events without any of you! Feel free to email comments, suggestions, or questions to Heather at madisonsoup@gmail.com

• The “Dane County Sweet Potato Project” is an initiative to get the community planting and harvesting sweet potatoes with the end goal of donating the yield to local food pantries. Community partners are the Dane County UW-Extension, Slow Food Madison, River Food Pantry, Community Action Coalition, and Equinox Community Farms.

• Theatre in All the Wrong Places is a group of local theatre artists who have joined forces to provide an outlet for professional theatre in Madison. In Spring 2013, we will mount a full-scale, professional production (we call them explorations) of Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph in a series of non-traditional, unused spaces in Madison.

If you have any questions about the event please feel free to contact Heather at madisonsoup@gmail.com

We will also have samples of products from Yumbutter and Food Your Body Likes.

*Event time has been changed from 6-8pm to 2-4pm due to Super Bowl taking place that evening.

The December Madison SOUP event will be held on Sunday, December 9th from 6-8pm at Sector67-2100 Winnebago St.

Tickets are available via the Eventbrite button in the Right Column of this screen or go to madison-soup.eventbrite.com

We will be serving Roasted Cauliflower (vegetarian) and Roasted Garlic and Potato Chowder (vegan) soups, french bread, lettuce salad, and lemonade/coffee/water/BYOB.

During the meal we will be hearing an update from October’s winner Tami Miller about Feeding the State Street Family. We will then hear from 4 projects to vote on.

1. ReJeweled-Mentoring Positives
2. Meg Rothstein-Creative Writing Group for the Warming Shelter on East Washington Ave.
3. Quiet Santa-Julie Sheldon and Jim Sheldon
4. Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (WBTP)-Camy Matthay, John Peck, Elizabeth Severson, Dennis Bergren and others.

Our next event will be held on Sunday, December 9th from 6-8pm at Sector67-2100 Winnebago St.

Tickets are available via Eventbrite.

Project’s can be submitted via the Project Proposal form until Tuesday, December 4th.

All questions can be submitted to Heather at madisonsoup@gmail.com

We had another successful event last night because of all our community members who come out to support Madison SOUP’s mission! Thank you to John and Chele for opening their (awesome) home to us, all the volunteers who helped me setup, cleanup, help run the door, and make my stress level a little lower in general
And I especially am grateful to Driftless Organics to donating all the produce for the event! Because of their generous donation we saved over $100 on the food costs and were able to put more money directly into our community to help others! We also have lots of extra vegetables that we can can/freeze to use at the next event to help keep costs low again.

We had a bit of change in plans as one of the presenters backed out on Friday and we were unable to fill the spot. Therefore Tami Miller’s project “Feeding the State Street Family” was awarded $252 to use towards buying winter supplies and necessities for Madison’s homeless community. Tami mentioned that this is the largest contribution they have received since formation of their group and are hoping to help as many people as possible with these funds. We look forward to hearing from Tami in December to find out how many people we were able to help. If you are interested in helping them more please follow them on Facebook: Feeding the State Street Family.

Our next event will be on Sunday, December 9th from 6-8pm back at Sector67-2100 Winnebago Ave. I will post again when tickets go on sale in November. If you would like to submit your project/business that is working towards improving Madison please click on the Project Proposal link located in the Right side column on this page.

P.S. Detroit SOUP (the inspiration for Madison SOUP) has an article in this month’s Oprah Magazine.

Tickets are now available for the Sunday, October 7th Madison SOUP Event from 6-8pm via Eventbrite <madison-soup.eventbrite.com>
You may either purchase or reserve a $10 Admission Ticket and/or use a Donation Ticket to donate any amount. Due to the limited numbers of tickets for events, if you know you will be unable to attend the event please use the Donate Ticket instead of an Admissions Ticket so we can make sure everyone who wants to attend will be able to.

Projects that will be pitching at the event:

1. Savanna Gardens

• Our project is an LLC started by Peter Allen and Maureen Carlson. Our company is based out of New Forest Farm, a a 100-acre, certified organic, perennial farm modeled on the Midwestern oak savanna in Southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless region. We live and work on this farm planting and tending trees, foraging fruits and nuts, and managing integrated rotations of diverse grazing animals in the pastures between the trees. We also conduct research here, evaluating the farm’s agricultural yields and the ecosystem services it provides such as carbon sequestration, water infiltration, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity, and assisting in the development of disease resistant and highly productive varieties of perennial crops such as hazelnut, chestnut, and walnut. Currently, we are grazing chickens, cows and turkeys. We are running a pastured egg CSA and are selling our cattle and turkeys for meat this fall to customers in Madison.
• Our company is providing healthy, high-quality produce to people in the Madison area while building healthy and diverse ecosystems. The land we graze is healthier because we are there: healthier soil, diverse insect and bird communities, and a greater diversity of plants. The quality of our food reflects this. Madison benefits from both interactions. We need healthier ecosystems for a healthier planet and healthier food for better people. Hopefully Savanna Gardens promotes a model for agricultural businesses to come.
• It is difficult to fund projects such as this in their very first years of startup. We will be planting several acres in sunflowers next season, to be pressed into biodiesel. The funds from Madison SOUP will go towards buying seeds and converting our car to run on the biodiesel produced on the farm. That way the eggs we deliver to Madison will be powered by the oil we produce on the very land they graze, fertilized by their manure.

2. Tami Miller-Homeless Outreach Group

• I started a grassroots homeless outreach program in Madison. Through Facebook, we feed about 150 or so people every Saturday in the Philosopher’s Stones (concrete) Park at the top of State St., We also do “Midnight Runs” at different intervals throughout the “off-season” while the chronically homeless have used up their 60-90 days for the year and bring SUV and pickup truck loads of survival gear to State Street putting it directly into the hands of those who need it most. We also do outreach to the homeless encampments (Occupy) and kids who sleep in the woods around the city in tents because their homes are not safe and there is no shelter for at-risk youth. We are gap fillers, and I can’t possibly tell you all of the group members names unless I copy the 800+ Facebook friends i have because some show up and volunteer, some donate items or money and do it somewhat anonymously… the other thing we do is treat people that are homeless like they are family, we mentor and cultivate relationships with them, hug and encourage them…let them know that they matter and we care-which is something that means a lot to people who are in crisis and suddenly find themselves all alone in the world.
• We help homeless individuals connect with services, get into homes, get to doctors appts, get bus tickets to stay with family until they are back on their feet…we encourage them and make sure they can survive the Wisconsin weather… we help provide stabilty and do triage medical care- saving taxpayer money…all of our supplies are donated by private individuals. We beleive that by helping others, we all do better..we want to make Madison not only a “Good Neighbor” City…but also, the “city of second chances”….
• The funds we receive would go towards buying emergency survival gear for the winter- blankets, sleeping bags, a couple of used coffee airpots so that when we walk the streets during cold weather changes- we can provide comfort to those forced to sleep outdoors.

We still have tickets available for the Sunday, August 12th event. To buy/reserve tickets please visit the Eventbrite page, or click on the banner in the right hand column of this page.

Presenters are:

1. The CREATE Movement is an initiative in Madison to help more people find
and use their creativity toward something their passionate about. We run weekend
retreats that bring people together to share in making progress on their
projects, and are working on making a mobile gallery to help artists and
creators support themselves by selling their work to the Madison community.

2. A simple mechanical device that can be built with standard parts that can
be machined by hand, or bought for a low price, and assembled within a month, to
collect algae from fresh water autonomously. This would remove nutrients from
the watershead and could provide a cheap organic fertilizer for local farmers or
fuel for coal power plants equipped with scrubbers. Any designs would follow the
FOSS model and would be uploaded to a site like thingiverse.
The secondary goal is to get as near as possible to a break-even lifecycle cost.
The system would be hydraulically driven, though solar (stagnant water) could
become an option in the future.
Winning will do two things:
a) Show that the general population has more than a casual interest in
seeing local water quality improved, and has the patience to allow failure.
b) Provide raw materials that sector67 doesn’t have, or charges for, to use
in this effort.

3. Mentoring Positives’ Inc. is a non profit agency serving at-risk youth in
Dane County. Founded in 2004, Mentoring Positives’ founder, Will Green and his
wife, Becky Green have provided individual and group mentoring to youth who
generally have mental health diagnosis, juvenile delinquency issues, or groups
to those youth who live in the Darbo/Worthington Park neighborhood on Madison’s
east side.
ReJeweled is a new project started by Assistant Director/Social Worker, Becky
Green. ReJeweled is a co-op like “business” for at-risk girls to learn how to
not only make jewelry pieces out of recycled items, but to understand the
concept of marketing and then selling their jewelry items.

We’ll also be hearing an update from Qi Julie, May’s winner, as to how they used the funds they won for their project.

The menu will be Gazpacho and Chilled Strawberry Soups, a lettuce salad, bread,
and lemonade/water provided-or BYOB.