Your Support Matters

Where Your Support Went

Naygrow Learning Center. Housed in the Colonial Heights Library, the center is valuable to that community and participation this year has increased. The library evaluated the center’s costs per student and found the economic value to be four times that of a private tutoring institution.

Schwab-Rosenhouse College and Career Center. In the last year of a multiyear gift, the center served more than 1,200 people. Sixty-one workshops were held throughout the 27 library locations.

Digitization of Sacramento Room Archive. With an initial gift, the Central Library has identified and begun the digitization of its archive. Digitization allows researchers and patrons the opportunity to use our archive from any location in the world. Endowment distributions will be focused on continuing this project over the next several years.

Branch Booster. Boosting books and materials and programming for children is exactly what your support achieved last year. More than 60 additional programs were conducted and 300 books were added to the system-wide children’s collection. Your support truly enhanced the development of our youngest readers.

Summer Reading Program. With the amazing support of Target, our Summer Reading program had more attendance than ever. Although corporate philanthropy is vanishing, Target is supporting Summer Reading for all our high-need branches next year. Thank you to the WNBA Sacramento Monarchs and the dozens of local businesses that provided prizes for our reading finishers.

Central Library Renovation. Through the generosity of Luella M. Steil, the Central Library has been able to make renovations, including expanding the teen area, creating a new technology lab and making room for a WiFi lounge.

Highlights

Estate Gift Increases
Books and Materials Endowment
The Friends and Foundation Books and Materials Endowment doubled its size this year with the more than $800,000 from the estate of Willoughby Lyons who left her legacy with the Friends. Because of work the Foundation has done to create a professional finance and audit committee, the Friends realized Mrs. Lyons’ legacy could create more resources for the library in perpetuity if it was included in the endowment. A special thank you to the Friends and Mrs. Lyons.

Phone Banking
This year’s efforts to reach past supporters brought 250 previous donors back into the circle. We will continue to reach out to our supporters because they know how important libraries are to our communities.

Pride of the Library
This year’s Pride of the Library was exciting, with fun and funny presentations from both Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Steve Lopez, author of the 2009 One Book Sacramento selection, The Soloist. Making Sacramento a world-class city means making our libraries world class. The mayor’s support for both the big ideas and the small moments is wonderful!