There are lots of books and articles about the history, the philosophy, the articulation of deliberative democracy, increasingly thought in a systematic perspective (see recent book by Mansbridge and Parkinson). Nevertheless the empirical support for such deliberative democracy has only been started to be explored (Neblo et al., Webb). In this general investigation, one specific – and unexplored so far – question is: who is willing to pay for deliberative democracy to make it happen? Indeed, while a large number of deliberative mini-publics have been funded by public money, an increasing number of designs are grassroots. Such bottom-up initiatives are therefore free of any governmental ties, which may mean a more open agenda and process but also mean the need to rely on its own funding. Our research question follows: who wants to pay for deliberative democracy and why?