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THE CHALLENGE
Austin stands at a defining moment. With 176,000 children under 18, the city has extraordinary assets—nationally recognized schools, award-winning parks and libraries, a vibrant nonprofit ecosystem, and substantial philanthropic capacity. Yet these strengths remain fragmented, with children's access to opportunities depending too heavily on where they live or who they know. Despite having more than 300 youth-serving organizations and robust programming across 128 school campuses, Austin lacks a unified framework to align efforts, track progress, and ensure every child benefits from the city's full promise. What's been missing isn't commitment to children—it's coordination, shared measurement, and the civic architecture needed to transform Austin's existing strengths into a comprehensive movement for child well-being.
"We have everything a kid could need, except a way to pull it all together."
THE CIVIC SOLUTION
CivicSol is partnering with United Way for Greater Austin to operationalize Mayor Kirk Watson's Generation ATX (GenATX) initiative through a comprehensive eight-month engagement that builds the foundation for Austin's child-centered strategy. Our work is structured around three guiding pillars—Healthy Kids, Safe Kids, and Happy and Successful Kids—and focuses on creating the infrastructure needed to turn vision into measurable action.
We are establishing the GenATX Champions Council to engage philanthropic and business leaders as advocates and early investors, conducting comprehensive ecosystem mapping to identify strengths, gaps, and opportunities for alignment across the city's child-serving landscape, and facilitating expert working groups and community convenings to ground the framework in both research and lived experience. Our approach includes developing the first-generation GenATX Scorecard with 5-7 metrics per pillar, conducting peer city benchmarking to position Austin against national leaders, and creating a Strategic Action Roadmap that bridges into Phase 2 implementation. Through learning salons, public convenings, and structured community engagement, we are building broad ownership while ensuring youth and family voices help shape the initiative from the ground up.
THE IMPACT
GenATX will position Austin as the first major U.S. city to systematically center child well-being through coordinated, accountable civic strategy. The initiative will deliver a comprehensive scorecard that makes children's health, safety, and happiness visible and measurable, an engaged Champions Council driving sustained philanthropic and private-sector investment, and aligned partnerships across nonprofits, schools, public agencies, and community organizations. By creating shared goals, accountability mechanisms, and coordination structures, this work will demonstrate how cities can transform fragmented efforts into comprehensive movements that ensure every child thrives. Austin's model will provide a replicable framework for cities nationwide while establishing measurable pathways for the city's 176,000 children to grow up healthy, safe, and joyful—regardless of their zip code or family circumstances.
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