How the Lab works.

Portland runs on budgets, audits, permit records, and legislative files that are public in theory and unreadable in practice. The Lab reads them, checks every figure against its source, and turns them into tools a resident, a reporter, a building owner, or a bureau director can use in an afternoon. Nobody in Oregon has that as their job, so we took it.

We run it like a studio. A small core starts the work, sets the standard, and keeps the archive, and each project brings in the specialists, partners, and advisors it needs, with everyone's role written down and their name on the deliverable. The paid work pays for the public work, and the public work is the reason anyone trusts the paid work.

We chose to be a company rather than a nonprofit because we wanted the free tools to run on our own earnings instead of on grant cycles. The downside is that support isn't tax-deductible.