ACTION ALERT: Join Save Austin Now in Demanding City Council Release List of Nonprofits That Failed Internal City Audit
19 of 25 audited nonprofits did not delivery on services they were fully paid for.
Good Thursday morning --
As local media reported ten days ago, a recent internal city audit found that of 25 local nonprofits who were fully paid their taxpayer-funded contracts with the City of Austin, 19 did not deliver the services that were required.
For some inexplicable reason, the City Council has refused to release the list of nonprofits.
Today, we are asking all Austinites to join us in demanding the City Council release the list.
ACTION ALERT: You can easily email the Mayor, the entire City Council, the City Manager and the City Auditor by clicking this link. Please make the email your own before you send it. This will take you less than 30 seconds.
Our press release, just out this morning, is pasted below.
For Immediate Release
June 30, 2026
Save Austin Now Calls on Austin City Council to Release List of Nonprofits Who Failed Internal Audit
City Audit Found 19 of 25 Reviewed Nonprofits Failed to Deliver on Contract Requirements
AUSTIN, TX — Nonpartisan grassroots organization Save Austin Now PAC today is calling on the Austin City Council to release the list of nonprofits that failed a recent internal audit. City leaders have said they will not release the list, which only deepens distrust between taxpayers and City Hall.
As KXAN reported last week:
The auditor’s office looked at a sample of 25 family and social service contracts amounting to roughly $30 million (for context, the city spent roughly $100 million with 95 of those nonprofits during FY 2025).
They found of those contracts, 19 of the contracted nonprofits did not meet one or more performance expectations.
“For nonprofits that did not meet one or more performance expectations, there were significant deviations between what the City was expected to receive and what the nonprofit provided,” the report said. It continued: “For more than half of the performance expectations we reviewed, what was provided was more than 40% below the expected amount. As a result, the City is paying for services that were not fully delivered, and vulnerable residents may not get the services they are supposed to receive.”
However, city leaders are refusing to release the list of nonprofits who failed the audit.
“City Hall needs to stop looking at city spending as a private matter and recognize these are taxpayer dollars paid by hard working Austinites,” said Save Austin Now co-chair Matt Mackowiak. “The overwhelming defeat of Prop Q last November undeniably showed that trust is broken between taxpayers and City Hall. You do not rebuild trust by hiding failure. Austin taxpayers have a right to know which city nonprofits failed this narrow and limited internal audit. Unlike this effort, or any future city-run audit ordinance, our Outside Audit Charter Amendment will fully release all findings and backup material. We are calling on City Council to release the list immediately, and we are asking all Austin taxpayers to join us in making this reasonable demand.”
“Austin social service nonprofits are more dependent by far on City tax funding than nonprofits in other large Texas cities,” said Bill Aleshire, a local attorney and former Travis County Judge who drafted the Save Austin Now’s Outside Audit Charter Amendment language. “There is a city law barring vendors from lobbying Council Members but the Council has exempted social service agencies from that law. These conditions plus secrecy in the audits of these contracts make this a Petri dish for corruption and waste of tax dollars. This situation was explained to the Council in a 2019 Audit and Council has done nothing to fix it.”
Austinites who wish to contact the Mayor and City Council to join this effort can easily do so here.
More information about Save Austin Now PAC can be found at SaveAustinNow.com.
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As we have said before, WE HAVE ONLY BEGUN TO FIGHT!
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-Save Austin Now PAC
Pol. ad. paid for by Save Austin Now PAC. Leland Bickers, Treasurer. SaveAustinNowPAC.com
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