Organizations Filed Purposes:
Crime Stoppers of Houston is a citizen-operated charitable organization whose mission is to solve and prevent serious crimes in the Greater Houston area in partnership with citizens, media, and the criminal justice system.
The Safe School Institute fulfills part of our mission to help solve and prevent serious crimes. In 2020, our team educated 38,734 students and 15,213 educators via 551 presentations. An additional 7,218 people joined our online presentations. We added new presentations for students on Bullying Prevention for Tweens as well as Teens, Situational Awareness and Juvenile Laws. We also created new presentations for parents and educators addressing Cyber Safety & Human Trafficking Awareness, Gaming Safety and Social Media Safety in partnership with our Safe Community Program. Our organization partners with the TEA by the program manager's participation in their monthly meetings on human trafficking and mandatory reporting. This is part of Crime Stoppers' role in the statewide reach funded by a grant from the TEA. Statewide Quarterly Training was provided in person in Q1 and virtually for the remaining three quarters, and 324 participants attended. 162 organizations were reached which impacted 551 ISDs statewide. The SAVE platform was created in June in partnership with the TEA for the purpose of informing, educating and providing resources for teachers, school administrators, school-based law enforcement and Crime Stoppers organizations throughout TX. Because this is all virtual, we reached 861 people across the state and welcomed many participants from other states and countries as well.
Crime Stoppers of Houston (CSOH) operates 713-222-TIPS, a telephone tip line. Information about criminal activity is received and transferred to law enforcement for immediate action. Callers are promised anonymity and cash rewards of up to $5,000 in exchange for their accurate crime tips. Our organization provides a safe forum for citizens to report crime in their neighborhoods and schools without the fear of retaliation. We are the eyes and ears of law enforcement in the community. In 2020, the Tip Line received 9,069 tips which led to 374 felony cases solved and $310,800 in cash rewards were paid. In addition to the $83,467 of restricted cash received by court fines to pay tipster rewards, three area law enforcement agencies donated services valued at $1,756,177. COVID-19 was a factor in the decreased number of solved cases because schools were not open for most of the year and warrant teams were not running on non-violent warrants. Additionally, local news was dominated by this crisis.
In 2020, the Safe Community Program reached 12,053 community members and 3,224 parents through 211 events and presentations on topics such as self-defense, anti-terrorism and human trafficking. We offered new tip sheets in both English and Spanish, developed monthly Safety Hot Topic videos, Cyber Safety videos, and hosted a College Safety Summit with the mission of educating young people on how to defend themselves holistically as they embark on young adult life. The new Parent Resource Packet is a tangible resource to assist in navigating the virtual world, and the new Leadership Development Series on Facebook offered discussion on difficult current topics. The Balanced Voice with Rania Mankarious weekly podcast began in September. Rania engaged in difficult but balanced conversations with her guests in 17 episodes which reached 212,024 people. The Victim Services and Advocacy Program is a component of the Safe Community Program and focuses on the safety, healing, justice and rights for crime victims and survivors. The director began doing criminal history checks on suspects charged with murder and noticed a trend that many of the defendants charged with murder were released on multiple felony bonds, personal recognizance (PR) bonds, motion to revoke bond denied and bond forfeiture. This list of 83 victims murdered by these defendants released between 2018-2020 included 51 victims who were murdered in 2020. Eleven of these were victims of domestic violence and three were unborn children. Because of our sharing this information, Fox26 began a series, Breaking Bond, to bring this issue to the public. The director also briefed the HC Commissioners on his research and worked on legislation regarding felony bond reform.
Executives Listed on Filing
Total Salary includes financial earnings, benefits, and all related organization earnings listed on tax filing
| Name | Title | Hours Per Week | Total Salary |
|---|
| Rania Mankarious | CEO/Exec Dir | 50 | $275,982 |
| Don Woo | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Fenner Weller | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Dave Ward | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Jill Talisman | Director | 0.3 | $0 |
| Jeff Stearns | Director | 0.3 | $0 |
| Ray Shackelford | Director | 0.3 | $0 |
| Jordan Seff | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Megan Ortiz | Director | 0.2 | $0 |
| Ricardo Nazario | Director | 0.6 | $0 |
| Eric Mayo | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Christopher Massey | Director | 0.4 | $0 |
| Oscar Martinez | Director | 0.3 | $0 |
| Linda Schaefer Levy | Director | 0.3 | $0 |
| Patricia King-Ritter | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Maha Khan | Director | 0.2 | $0 |
| Brigitte Kalai | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Susan Holcomb | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Jill Herrera | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Michelle Heinz | Director | 0.1 | $0 |
| Travis Dorrah | Director | 0.3 | $0 |
| Melissa Davis | Director | 0.5 | $0 |
| John Crapitto | Director | 0.6 | $0 |
| George Buenik | Director | 0.5 | $0 |
| Bryan Beene | Director | 0.3 | $0 |
| Lindsay Aronstein | Secretary | 1.1 | $0 |
| Justin Vickrey | VP, Treasurer | 0.9 | $0 |
| Jeff Vaden | Chairman | 0.7 | $0 |
Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (
public 990 form dataset) from:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202121319349300737_public.xml