Community Based Participatory Research

Boulder Food Rescue is committed to evidence-based practices and continuing to conduct research to inform our programs and work in the community. We believe in the importance of understanding the systems that we lend a hand in, including food waste and food insecurity. We base our research in understanding community needs and including community voices. To do this, we include community in the design and questions we are asking, in the data analysis, and in the decisions about what to do with our work.

Our primary areas of focus are:

Food Access
Participation and Inclusion in Nonprofits
Food Waste

Once our research is conducted, we serve as educators and consultants to nonprofits and individuals seeking to learn more about food access, food waste, and participation.

If you would like to receive consulting services, educational services, or understand more about these programs, please contact us.

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please follow guidelines when using our work.

Our portfolio of research publications can be found here

2020: Food Access in Boulder, CO report

This report aims to offer the general public, policy influencers, foundations and funders, government agencies, nonprofit service providers, and anyone else interested in food access, a deeper look at how someone experiences food insecurity within the Boulder food access landscape. Although focused in the city of Boulder, many of these concepts extend beyond the city limits.

This report is the outcome of several years of community-based participatory research. It looks at barriers to food access, and how those barriers intersect, amplify and compound upon one another. We offer recommendations for each of these stakeholder groups.

2019: Participation Framework (English and Spanish)

Although focused on food access, this guide is written to support all nonprofits and other human service organizations to analyze their own systems and to better understand how they can become more participatory. We believe that as we all start including the voices of people most affected by our work in the work, access to services will increase, and ultimately, people will feel more affirmed and respected and will be better supported and resourced towards enacting community change.