Four ways in.
Get pro-bono data help for your newsroom or nonprofit, join the lab as a student or researcher, build on our open-source tools, or support the mission. Let Cupid play matchmaker.
Request help from the desk
Pro-bono technical assistance for Colorado's journalists, lawyers, nonprofits, and independent researchers. Recognize your problem below — or just describe it.
“I have a bunch of PDFs”
Pull the tables and text out of documents and scans into data you can actually analyze.
“A website's data disappeared”
Recover removed or quietly altered public data — and preserve it before it's gone for good.
“Combine data from different sources”
Merge, reconcile, and de-duplicate messy files into one clean, analysis-ready dataset.
“Fact-check an analysis”
Reproduce the numbers, stress-test the methods, and surface the caveats before you publish.
“Make a chart people can read”
Turn findings into clear charts and maps a general audience understands at a glance.
“Make sense of thousands of records”
Classify, summarize, and search documents at scale — with responsible-AI caveats up front.
Working on something sensitive? Don't use the form.
The intake form below hands your message to a third-party form service — fine for routine project requests, wrong for confidential sources, privileged legal work, or anything that needs to stay off the record. For those, reach a person directly on a channel you trust: no form, no tracking, no middle-man — and you're always talking to someone who does the work.
How it works
Describe your project and the kind of help you need.
CUPIDS pairs you with a student team suited to the work.
Students learn from real problems; you get real capacity.
Request received.
Cupid's on it — we'll be in touch to make your match.
Join the lab
A pipeline from undergraduate engagement through graduate study to professional practice — open across disciplines, methods, and career stages.
Graduate Researchers
Two-year appointments — open across disciplines — leading student teams, building data infrastructure, and producing original data journalism. Funding and stipend details to be confirmed.
Visiting Researchers
One-semester or full-year appointments for mid-career journalists, lawyers, policy researchers, and civic technologists — workspace and university access. Stipend details to be confirmed.
Undergraduate Researchers
Competitive, mentored positions open to every major — real skills, a public-interest portfolio, and the start of the pipeline. Compensation details to be confirmed.
Use our tools
Everything the lab learns, we publish back — free to use, adapt, and build on. Browse the open data archive and guides, or clone one of our open-source, MIT-licensed agent skills into your AI coding agent, describe the task in plain language, and send issues or pull requests our way.
Browse the resources
A documented, durable archive of at-risk public datasets — plus reproducible pipelines and evaluated AI and mapping tooling, open to use and cite.
data-liberation-skill
An agent skill that turns removed web pages, PDFs, FOIA releases, and messy spreadsheets into tidy, documented, reproducible datasets — at the complexity level your project needs.
data-project-skill
An agent skill that scaffolds an open, inclusive data collaboration: it interviews you, proposes a right-sized plan, and generates just the structure, docs, and governance a project needs.
Support our work
Organizations and philanthropy multiply what the lab can do — through collaborations, sponsored projects, and named, endowed positions.
For partner organizations
Colorado's media organizations, civic groups, and professional associations can collaborate through sponsored projects, in-kind contributions, and joint funding proposals.
For funders
Named research positions and sponsored infrastructure offer tangible, visible impact. We work with CU Advancement to align philanthropic priorities with public-interest outcomes.
Express interest
Tell us who you are — we'll point you to the right door.
Thanks — we got it.
We'll reach out with next steps for the inaugural cohort.