We measure client engagement as well as outcomes at SYMin. It's how we know that we are effective and impactful. We watch for sustained trends to reinforce our believes but also for changes that present opportunities or challenges.

2024 was the largest year for unique clients in our age range in our history, serving 508 young adults throughout the year. 2025 year-to-date is bigger than last year, with 268 already served.

That said, most engagement is coming from the street outreach sessions. We currently see almost twice as many people in line anywhere we go for services. And among them roughly 20% are in our age range. We meet them, serve them on the street, and invite them back to our drop-in for additional services. In the first part of the year, this was working great.

Recently in the past month, we've seen fewer new clients coming to our drop-in. We're not sure the reason. We had our flood. But that really shouldn't bother new clients. It's summertime, although it hasn't been that hot. Actually, that might be the culprit. Our air-conditioning and shower have less value in temperate weather.

But we suspect something else is going on. We fear that clients have less time to try to visit us. We think that the long lines mean they are waiting loner in line, getting less, and having to seek other lines. Since they've not been to our location yet, they may not know how valuable a visit to our location can be.

In addition, a lot of new clients are not that familiar with the bus system of Austin and there has been some instability in homeless riding busses for free. We are able to provide all our clients with bus passes to come for a visit and they all can get free bus passes eventually from the homeless system of Travis County.

Our team will work on ways to message the value of a visit to our center. And we'll keep being curious as to what clients need most. This is why we recently added work shoes and glasses to our offering via a special grant.

We know that once a client starts coming, they discover the value of visiting regularly. However, we have to get them there the first few times to be able to cross that bridge. Until we crack the code, we're making sure that outreach remains strong and trying to improve the level of engagement with younger clients on the street.