2025
ANNUAL REPORT
A message from our publisher
Larry Ryckman
PUBLISHER
Dear Friends,
2025 was a meaningful year for The Colorado Sun. As a community-supported nonprofit, our journalism exists for readers, and made possible by you. With your support, we published nearly 2,000 stories from every corner of Colorado, more than three dozen of which earned awards. We partnered with dozens of newsrooms across the state and beyond, collaborating to report, share and amplify stories so that vital local journalism could travel further and reach more people.
Our audience and supporting membership continued to grow, a clear sign that more Coloradans are choosing to stay informed and engaged. We also strengthened our organization from the inside, hiring key new leadership, including our first development director and chief operating officer, to help position The Sun for long-term sustainability. And we were grateful for significant new investments from foundations that share our belief in the importance of informed, connected Colorado communities.
We invite you to take a closer look at what we accomplished together in 2025: what we learned, how we grew and how those lessons are shaping our plans for 2026. You’ll find insights into our reporting, our finances and our people, including introductions to new staff and highlights from a strong year of journalism.
We’re proud to be your Colorado newsroom — reliable, curious and rooted in the communities we serve. Every day, our team works to bring clarity and context to the stories that matter most, sharing facts, insight and voices from across the state.
As always, we welcome your feedback, ideas and story tips, and we hope you’ll reach out anytime.
Thank you for standing with The Colorado Sun and for helping make 2025 a success, for our newsroom and for Colorado.
With gratitude,
Larry Ryckman
Publisher
Strategic Vision
Lasting impact is more than great reporting.
Since our founding, The Sun has delivered award-winning journalism. But lasting impact requires more than great reporting. It demands strong systems, reliable revenue and operational discipline. So in July 2025, our board, management and leadership teams set out to build a roadmap for long-term sustainability.
The results were a focused three-year strategic plan designed to sharpen our impact, expand and deepen statewide coverage and strengthen our infrastructure.
We also conducted an internal assessment, including a staffwide survey, and overhauled internal communications, workflows and performance tracking. The survey led to the creation of six staff-led working groups to drive improvement and accountability. One team is expressly dedicated to impact tracking: identifying and improving how we measure results and clarifying our goals around reporting, audience engagement and community reach. Because journalism doesn’t just inform — it drives change.
We closed the year ahead of projections, enabling us to begin building long-term resilience, launching a reserve fund and opening an investment account to secure The Sun’s future. This is what maturation looks like: clearer strategy, stronger systems and a durable foundation for the journalism Colorado deserves.
The Sun rolled into 2026 in a strengthened financial position, with the right people in the right jobs and with a clear, shared purpose of serving you, our readers.
2025-2028 strategic priorities
Launch regional expansion beginning in northeastern Colorado, ensuring local voices, priorities and experiences shape coverage.
Build community trust and engagement through listening sessions, transparency, community-driven reporting and long-term relationships.
Sustain and grow The Sun through diversified funding: membership, philanthropy, sponsorships and earned revenue.
Invest in accountability, culture and talent across the organization.
Solidify governance, leadership and operational excellence to build strength and resilience.
The impact of our journalism
From the Eastern Plains to the Four Corners, Colorado Sun journalists covered the state in 2025 reporting stories that investigated, explained and illuminated. Here are some examples.
What is a river?
▶ A waterway that nourishes us, a resource that suffers because of us, a ribbon of water that connects us. Sun journalists traveled along the Arkansas River from its headwaters to the Kansas border to tell its story and that of the communities it touches.
Aging in Colorado
▶ Colorado is aging rapidly — the third-fastest of any state. Are we prepared? We looked at how these shifting demographics affect housing, the workforce and quality of life, and whether Colorado has the services needed for people to age in place.
Investigative reporting
Serving Colorado means digging deep. The Sun uncovered stories in 2025 that some would rather remain hidden to provide accountability.
Covering community
Colorado is not just a state of great beauty; it is a state of beautiful cultures and vibrant communities. The Sun worked in 2025 to be a news source for all of Colorado.
Strengthening democracy
An informed public is vital for civic engagement and a healthy democracy. The Sun in 2025 reported on politics and government with tenacity to help Coloradans make knowledgeable decisions about the state’s future.
1,870
The number of news articles published by The Colorado Sun in 2025.
Culture of Collaboration
The Sun partnered with local and national newsrooms to publish more than 180 stories from other journalism organizations, including the Colorado Capitol News Alliance, CPR, KUNC, KFF Health News, Aspen Journalism, The Colorado Trust and more.
Awards: National, regional and local recognition
While we don’t write stories to win awards, receiving recognition for hard work and dedication from our peers in the industry is the cherry on top of the support we get from our readers.
Major awards
Edward R. Murrow Awards
National award for news series, large market
Debt in the Dark — 9News, The Colorado Sun and KFF Health News, in partnership with the Colorado News Collaborative
SABEW Best in Business Awards
Personal Finance, medium division
Diagnosis: Debt Colorado — The Colorado Sun in partnership with the Colorado News Collaborative, 9News, KFF Health News and Colorado Newsline
Best of the West
Investigative Reporting, second place
Diagnosis: Debt Colorado — The Colorado Sun in partnership with the Colorado News Collaborative, 9News, KFF Health News and Colorado Newsline
Colorado Press Association
5
1st place awards, including best website and best investigative story package.
5
2nd place awards, including for our politics and social justice reporting.
Top of the Rockies
7
1st place awards
8
2nd place awards
9
3rd place awards
Full list of The Sun’s awards from the four-state Top of the Rockies contest.
Audience: Who we do this for
The Colorado Sun is proud of the community we serve, and is excited to double down on our growth in the year ahead. Here’s a snapshot of our audience last year.
Readers
As we expand our reach across the state, our core group of readers continue to return to The Sun day after day.
826,000+ Unique readers a month
45,000+ More users visit 9 times a month
2:34 Average minutes spent per story (more than twice the industry average)
130,000+ Subscribers across nine daily and weekly newsletters
Listeners
Listeners in 2025 tuned into The Daily Sun-Up podcast to listen to regular host David Krause and a suite of reporters and new topics every week.
150+ Podcast episodes
1,000 Average daily downloads
10 minutes On average, listeners on Apple stayed for 70% of each episode — that’s 10 minutes
4.7/5 rating on Apple Podcasts and 4.8/5 rating on Spotify
Members
The Sun has members in all corners of Colorado, from Denver, Fort Collins, Steamboat Springs and Colorado Springs to Del Norte, Durango and Grand Junction. But our members don’t stop at the state line. Our supporters span the nation, including California and Texas, and across international borders into British Columbia.
35+ states
140+ Colorado cities and towns
2+ countries
Social media
Reddit | 2,200 subscribers to r/coloradosun
BlueSky | 44,000 followers
(formerly Twitter) | 36,000
Instagram | 25,000
Facebook | 23,000
Threads | 12,500
Mastodon | 3,200
LinkedIn | 3,200
Engagement: Journalism is more than news
The Colorado Sun is more than just high-quality journalism, it’s also the informed community of people who love this state. Our community extends beyond staffers to our members, supporters and readers. Our journalism strives to connect with our community in as many ways as possible.
Listening to you
As The Sun deepens and expands our statewide presence, we hosted our first in a series of listening sessions in northern Colorado. Our staff was blown away by the enthusiasm we saw and is excited to embark on more listening sessions in 2026.
Community members say they hope local news could look like this:
- Focus on local coverage including politics, community and the arts
- Community forum for local voices and positive stories
- Avoid PR-driven content and sound authentic despite imperfections
- Connect national issues to local impact
- Expand on social media
Expanding our events
The Sun launched three new events this year to provide you with more opportunities to connect. With a total of 12 virtual and in-person events throughout the year, including our annual Colorado SunFest, we hosted more than 1,600 attendees from more than 40 counties. The Sun also brought back and expanded our anniversary party, turning it into a weeklong affair with a pancake breakfast, brewery birthday party and volunteer day.
Take Me Home: Home Buying for Young Coloradans: An in-person mixer and panel on a downtown Denver rooftop patio to answer attendees’ questions about home-buying.
Reintroduction to Wolves 2.0: A virtual conversation about Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s plan to reintroduce wolves to the state
Guide to Hiking 14ers: An in-person panel hosted at the Mountain Chalet in Colorado Springs.
Reaching young Coloradans through Rise & Shine
The Sun’s Rise & Shine program celebrated its fifth anniversary this year. The daylong summer camp helped a dozen student journalists understand more about what it takes to work in a newsroom and why the press is an essential component of every community. We partnered with five other news organizations to help teach and mentor students, including 9News, CPR, KUNC, Rocky Mountain PBS and a freelance photojournalist.
This program reminds me year after year that the future of journalism is in very capable hands.
— Erica Breunlin, Rise & Shine program manager and Sun education reporter
Operations and accomplishments: The Sun grows up
This year marked an important turning point for our organization. In many ways, we’ve grown beyond the startup phase we entered in 2018 and stepped more fully into our role as a resilient, statewide nonprofit newsroom.
With multiyear grant support from the American Journalism Project, we made intentional investments to grow our revenue and enhance our operations, beginning with two pivotal leadership hires: a development director and chief operating officer. Together, these new staff have helped professionalize how we raise funds, communicate within and beyond the organization, build our approach to talent acquisition and retention, and craft a coherent plan for the future.
Behind the scenes, our product, technology and membership teams took on one of the year’s most complex efforts: a full migration to a new tech stack including customer management system, email platform and gift processor to better align with our new membership definition. Led by cofounder Eric Lubbers, the team continues to refine and customize these tools to deliver a smoother, more thoughtful experience for our members.
Together, these investments are strengthening the foundation that supports local journalism, so we can continue to serve Colorado with clarity, accountability and integrity for years to come.
Redefining membership
In the fall of 2023 we transitioned from a public benefit corporation (and for-profit) structure to a community-supported nonprofit model. One of the things we wanted to develop is a philanthropic, personal interaction with you. In 2025, we simplified our definitions of subscriber, member and donor after listening to your experiences and preferences.
So now, if you give any dollar amount within the year, you earn the title “member.” And you are free to support The Sun in the way that suits your budget and lifestyle. Monthly gifts sustain our work and provide regular, reliable revenue for our extended operations. And some folks give creatively, making use of tax benefits, through planned gifts of qualified charitable IRA distributions (QCDs), donor-advised funds (DAFs), gifts of stock and future legacy gifts.
We grew our staff!
Lamont Browne
Chief Operating Officer
Alyssa Pinkerton
Development Director
Taylor Dolven
Politics & Government Reporter
Meg Napper
Executive Operations Manager
Financials: Supported by you
As you can see in our revenue pie chart below, 50% of our funding comes directly from readers — like you — through member and major donor funds. An additional 35% of our funding comes from private grants.
In 2025, we trimmed our expenses and grew revenue, finishing the year in the strongest financial position ever.And while we continue to work to diversify our revenue streams, it is clear that the bulk of our work is funded by philanthropy from folks who care deeply about Colorado and local news — and we’re proud to be reader-supported.
Thank you for chipping in with your support and for being a part of our reader community. Every single dollar you give helps this newsroom flourish and enables our team to produce the Colorado news you depend on.
Who supports The Sun?
15,375
Paying members — 16% growth compared with last year
98%
Givers who are recurring donors
93
Major donors (giving $1,000 or more)
10
Foundation gifts
A message from our board
The Colorado Sun has a unique model among newsrooms: We’re a staff-led nonprofit, meaning 51% of the board positions are held by staff, giving our workers a vital role in the oversight and vision of our organization.
Nina Henderson Moore
Anthony
Neal-Graves
Sylvia Harmon
John Ingold
Danika Worthington
What a year it’s been!
When I stepped into the role of chair of The Colorado Sun’s nonprofit organization in 2023, I did so with a deep belief in the enduring value of local journalism and a clear sense that this team of reporters had a compelling vision for serving Colorado.
A few short years later, that vision is taking shape. The path hasn’t been simple, and meaningful challenges remain, but The Sun is moving forward with intention: clear strategies for growth, disciplined budgets that prioritize sustainability and strong operational leadership supporting both the journalism and the nonprofit mission. This progress is no accident, and I hope you’ll join me in recognizing the focus, resilience and commitment of this remarkable team.
I also want to pause to acknowledge you, our readers and supporters. A healthy news ecosystem depends on engaged, discerning readers who value facts, context and accountability. Without your support, The Sun simply wouldn’t exist. And neither would the shared understanding that helps our cities, towns and neighbors stay connected and informed. Your commitment to local journalism makes all of this possible.
I’m proud to partner with you,
Nina Henderson Moore
Board Chair
Thank you, readers
YOU are the fuel for our reporting. You give us story ideas, feedback, kudos and the financial backing that make this work possible.
Because of you, our newsroom can provide the kind of reporting Colorado needs right now: stories that go deeper, reach further and serve communities that are often overlooked.
Your investment gives our journalists the time and freedom to ask hard questions and then report back. You help us tell real, human stories with care and hold powerful institutions accountable without fear or influence.
For transparency, we list all the donors, businesses and foundations who contribute to The Sun at the $250 level and above.
Help us keep our news free for everyone by becoming a member today. When you give to The Colorado Sun, you’re defending facts, funding truth-seekers and keeping our communities informed. Donate now.