Our mission
To provide the people who live, work, learn and play in and around Boulder, Colorado, with high-quality, trustworthy, local-first reporting and essential information to make sense of issues and events happening around them, navigate their lives and build community.
About us
Boulder Reporting Lab launched in November 2021 to fill a gap in Boulder-local, public interest daily journalism. We’re the only independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, digitally native news organization in our city and county. We believe local journalism is a public good, vital to a healthy, thriving and equitable community and local economy. Our work is data-driven, solutions-focused and service-oriented. And, it is free to consume for all. To provide this public service, we rely on the support of philanthropic donors, readers and sponsors.
The Google News Initiative’s Local Experiments Project, which seeks to support innovative new models for journalism, provided our initial funding as well as technical and product expertise. This support lasted until August 2023. GNI had zero involvement or influence in any of our editorial decisions. Neither do any of our past or existing funders. (Read more about our editorial and transparency policies.)
Boulder Reporting Lab is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit news organization. Our tax identification number is 87-1232586. All donations received by readers, donors and sponsors are tax deductible, to the fullest extent allowable by law, retroactive to the date of our incorporation (May 26, 2021). One-hundred percent of your donation goes to fund our journalism!
Read more about our origins and why we call ourselves a “lab” here.
How it works
We publish in-depth stories and news coverage, along with an a.m. newsletter that seeks to keep you informed and connected on issues you care most about. (Learn about our priority coverage areas.) All you have to do is:
Bookmark our website. Our original reporting and storytelling is published here first. You’ll find exclusive stories and news briefs.
Join our newsletter community to get:
- BRL Today. A tidy a.m. newsletter of the most compelling stories, information and events to keep you informed locally, delivered (to start) three mornings a week.
- BRL Weekly A weekly newsletter of all the original stories we publish during the week, delivered every Saturday. (Coming soon!)
Follow us on social. Twitter. Facebook. Instagram.
What we bring
- Quality, non-partisan reporting that digs beneath the surface on issues of public importance and uncovers effective solutions to problems.
Shrinking staff and resources at legacy newspapers have left reporting gaps in our communities. We fill gaps locally by digging deep on issues of greatest community concern and pride across our beautiful city. We engage directly with our community to ensure we’re meeting actual information needs and interests, not our own whims or the political horse race of the day. We believe high-quality, fact-based local journalism and information can be a unifying force, sparking new conversation and connection, understanding, solutions and action.
- Important community information, curated.
We live in an information-rich community. It can feel overwhelming to navigate. In our newsletter, we carefully curate the most useful local information. We comb through thousands of social posts, press releases, reports and other content from non-news sources every day so you don’t have to. We elevate, in digestible snippets, what you need to know. We invite the community to take part in this work to hold us accountable and ensure we are elevating diverse sources and perspectives.
- A living laboratory for public service hyperlocal journalism.
We’re building a community-driven funding model for news to serve our community and inform our industry. We aim to position Boulder as a model for financially sustainable, impactful and equitable local nonprofit journalism. We see our city, with innovation in its DNA, as a fertile testing ground for replicable solutions to our nation’s local news crisis.
Meet our (growing) newsroom
We’re the journalists of the Boulder Reporting Lab.
These are regular part-time contributors.
These are our past reporting fellows and interns.
Meet our board of directors (updated May 2025)
We’re expanding our board of directors and looking for two new members to join us in 2025 to help grow Boulder Reporting Lab. If you’re interested in learning more, we’d love to hear from you.
Leslie Allen
Leslie Allen has three decades of experience leading fundraising teams, partnering with boards, and creating innovative development and communications programs for organizations of all sizes. After receiving an MBA in Public and Nonprofit Management from Boston University’s Questrom School of Management, Leslie spent 15 years at Greenpeace USA in Washington, D.C., returning in 2022 to lead Greenpeace’s dynamic fundraising operation as Chief Development Officer in the U.S.
Leslie moved to Boulder in 2006 and partnered with Co-Founder Ann Goldman to create Front Range Source, a full-service fundraising consulting firm that served a variety of clients around the world for over a decade. Front Range Source also provided a weekly fundraising blog and free toolbox for thousands of subscribing nonprofit fundraisers.
Leslie has served as a volunteer and board member throughout her professional life, including as Board Chair of the Community Foundation of Boulder County; Vice Chair of ActionAid USA; and Fundraising Committee Chair of the Motus Theater Board of Directors. She is thrilled to be part of Boulder Reporting Lab’s Board of Directors.
Leslie lives in Boulder with her husband of 32 years, Jamie Brache, and together they have three amazing adult daughters.
Bill Pollak
Over the course of his career, Bill has successfully led business transformation and market expansion, while gaining significant experience as a Board Member and Advisor to both PE-backed and not-for-profit institutions.
Bill most recently served as Group President responsible for Fortive’s Facility & Asset Lifecycle Group, including three great software companies — Accruent, Gordian and ServiceChannel. Prior to joining the Software Industry, Bill spent 30 years in leadership positions within the Media Industry, including 16 years as an Executive with the NY Times and 14 years as CEO of American Lawyer Media (ALM), the country’s largest provider of news and information for and about lawyers and law firms.
Bill previously served on the board of Bobit Business Media until its sale in September 2024. He is a past board member at Enerknol, the innovative energy policy data and analytics company. He is also a past board member of Multiview, Inc. and past chairman and board member of both American Business Media and Probono Net.
Bill is a graduate of Harvard College and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Matt Kane
Matt Kane is an entrepreneur, founder, board member, and former Co-CEO (2005-2019) of Greenshades Software, a national provider of payroll software. He is also a founder, board member, and former CEO (2014-2018) of Welltality, a software and services company helping primary care physicians and hospital systems practice preventive medicine.
Matt has been serving on public, private, and not-for-profit boards for over two decades. Most recently he served as Chair of the Jacksonville University Board of Trustees (2022-2025).
Matt graduated from Jacksonville University with a degree in Computer Information Systems, received an MBA from the University of Florida, and a Master’s in Data Science from University of California, Berkeley.
Tammy Terwelp
Tammy Terwelp is the CEO & President of KUNC public radio in Northern Colorado. She is a 20-year public media veteran with roots in music commercial radio in Wisconsin. She oversee all aspects of KUNC and The Colorado Sound’s operations, the ongoing development of the organization’s culture, and the fulfillment of its mission. She works with KUNC’s Board in the continual development of strategic planning, embody the plan’s vision, and lead the organization to its successful implementation.
She previously worked in public television in Wisconsin and Chicago and was the Director of Distribution and Logistics at WBEZ in Chicago, Director of Content and Programming at WESA in Pittsburgh, General Manager of KRCC in Colorado Springs, and most recently, the Executive Director at Aspen Public Radio.
Stacy Feldman
Stacy Feldman is the founder and publisher of Boulder Reporting Lab. An experienced editor with expertise in climate change and journalism entrepreneurship, she co-founded Inside Climate News (ICN) in 2007, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit newsroom covering climate, energy, and environmental issues. Over 13 years, she played a key role in growing ICN from a two-person startup into a nationally recognized newsroom with nearly 20 employees, serving as executive editor from 2015 to 2020. During that time, ICN earned dozens of national journalism awards and became a leading model for climate journalism.
Stacy holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In August 2020, she became a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she developed the concept for Boulder Reporting Lab and secured its initial funding.
Our editorial policy and transparency
We adhere to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News:
Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.
We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support. Editorial decisions are made by journalists and editors alone. We do not give supporters the rights to assign, review or edit content.
Our organization may consider donations to support the coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.
As a nonprofit that operates as a public trust, we do not pay certain taxes. We may receive funds from standard government programs offered to nonprofits or similar businesses.
Our organization will make public all one-time donations of $5,000 or more. We will avoid accepting charitable donations from anonymous sources in excess of $5,000, political parties, elected officials or candidates seeking public office. If our board of directors deems a donation presents a conflict of interest with our work or will compromise our independence, we will not accept that donation.
Nonprofit newsrooms that are members of the Institute for Nonprofit News pledge to be transparent about the funding of their news operations and maintain editorial independence from all revenue sources to ensure news judgments are made in the interest of the communities they serve as journalists.
We also adhere to the code of ethics of the Society for Professional Journalists.
Learn about our supporters.
Corrections
We acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently. We explain corrections and clarifications carefully and clearly.
Supporters
The Google News Initiative’s Local Experiments Project, which seeks to support innovative new models for journalism, provided our initial funding. GNI had zero involvement or influence in any of our editorial decisions. Neither do any of our funders. (Read more about our editorial and transparency policies.)
Our growing organization makes public all donations of $5,000 or more.
$100,000 – $800,000
Google News Initiative – Local Experiments Project
$20,000 – $50,000
Colorado Media Project
Innovo Foundation
Matt and Alexis Kane Family Fund
Reynolds Journalism Institute
$5,000 – $20,000
Chronicle of Philanthropy
Comprise (Community Leader business sponsor)
Denver Foundation
Fund for Nonprofit News at The Miami Foundation
Gail and Porter Storey
Jan Burton
Local Independent Online News Publishers
Marshall and Idelle Feldman
Ned and Nathalie Fund
Pulitzer Center
The Feldman Family Fund