A SINGLE VOICE CAN START A MOVEMENT. MANY VOICES CAN CHANGE A SYSTEM.

OUR MISSION

The Austin Animal Welfare Coalition exists to protect and strengthen Austin’s lifesaving, humane animal sheltering system by bringing together the full animal welfare ecosystem, including volunteers, advocates, rescue partners, professionals, and residents, despite differing perspectives in order to improve the outcomes for the City’s animals.

We focus on aligning community effort, lived experience, and civic participation so that lifesaving outcomes are driven by coordinated systems, shared responsibility, and informed decision-making. We work to ensure that Austin remains a community where pets are not killed just because they came into a shelter, humane care is a baseline expectation, and all residents have meaningful access to shelter services. Our work is guided by Austin’s long-standing No Kill policy commitments and informed by current data, operational realities, and community experience.

Who we are

The Austin Animal Welfare Coalition is a nonpartisan grassroots, volunteer collective of animal welfare stakeholders, local organizations, and taxpayers committed to the mission, purpose and vision (outlined in this document) of the Austin Animal Welfare Coalition.

The Austin Animal Welfare Coalition formed out of a shared recognition among advocates, rescue partners, volunteers, and professionals that long-standing fragmentation across Austin’s animal welfare ecosystem was limiting progress and undermining core animal welfare principles. For years, well-intentioned efforts operated in parallel rather than in coordination, creating gaps between policy, shelter operations, and community action.

In response, a group of community leaders began meeting regularly to build alignment, share information, and create a more coordinated approach to supporting Austin’s animal shelter system and the animals it serves. The Coalition focuses on fostering collaboration, elevating accurate and accessible information, and creating constructive pathways for community engagement. Through public education, meetings, and information-sharing, the Coalition works to strengthen shelter practices, promote humane and effective policies, and ensure that the experiences of those directly impacted by animal welfare decisions inform ongoing improvement.

While the Coalition’s founding leadership group will continue to provide strategic direction to ensure focus on our mission and vision, we are committed to growing a broader coalition of community participants. We invite members of the public to engage in Coalition meetings, events, and initiatives. Participants may serve on committees established to advance key priorities, help share information with the community, and act as ambassadors for the Coalition within their neighborhoods and professional networks.

OUR PURPOSE

We advocate for policies, leadership decisions, and operational practices that support humane care, open intake, and sustainable lifesaving outcomes. We recognize that lifesaving is achieved through coordinated systems and programs—not a single metric. It requires robust programming to support animals with varying medical and behavioral needs, strong community partnerships, and the operational capacity to ensure animals are not euthanized for space. We support implementation of the City’s adopted frameworks alongside evidence-based best practices.
We work to align advocates, volunteers, rescue partners, professionals, and community members around shared goals and accurate information. By reducing fragmentation and fostering collaboration, we aim to restore trust, close programmatic gaps, and ensure responsibility for outcomes is shared across the ecosystem.
We work to equip the community and policymakers with clear, accessible information about shelter operations, policy impacts, and community needs. By promoting data transparency, tracking public commitments, and sharing community-informed insights, we help ensure decisions are grounded in facts, community experience, and best practices. Our goal is to empower stakeholders with the knowledge needed to support accountability and informed decision-making.