Important Changes to Group SRP Prize procedures

Greetings all,

The following is an email from Heidi regarding SRP group registration.

Thanks,
Justine

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It has come to our attention that this year we already have identified at least a handful or more of potentially fraudulent groups who are registering under various names and collecting large amounts of prizes, but whose information can not be verified.

To keep this from occurring, we are now asking that groups (specifically those over 10 kids) that register must show/ provide one of the following to collect their prizes:

State Daycare Registration/ License Number (if they don’t have an official paper with the license number you can look them up here: http://www.dfps.state.tx.us/Child_Care/Search_Texas_Child_Care/CCLNET/Source/CPA/ppSearchTXChildCare2.aspx)
501 c.3 status (You can search here if they don’t have proof http://www.irs.gov/app/pub-78/forwardToSearch.do)

If it is a school then they can show a current School ID and list their Principal and a contact number for the school. We will send you a form to assist with this later today
If they do not have any of these items, but you feel or know that they are valid, just try to get them to show you something that is valid, even if it is just google searching their name and address to verify. For example, one of the possible fraudulent groups used a real group’s name, but we can call the real group and find out if they actually signed up for the program.
If they are a group that says they are a large family or something similar then they should have all the kids register individually with their parent or caregiver, and they should not register as a group.

If you need assistance with this, please let us know. We are not trying to make the summer more difficult, but we are trying to make the program one that rewards kids for reading and not rewarding people who just want to get the prizes. As you all know, our prize numbers are low this year, and we need to make things stretch as much as possible. We have also had issues with this in the past, where “groups” actually got the prizes and scalped them for profit.

I am out of the office this afternoon, but if you have questions that must be answered today, please call Michaela at x32028 or Jane at x32027.

Heidi

Heidi M Daniel, LIV
Programming
Houston Public Library
500 McKinney
Houston, TX 77002