In 2011, Tracy Wingrove joined the Santa Clara City Library Foundation & Friends (SCCLFF) as the Associate Executive Director to then Executive Director Maria Daane. After Daane moved on, Wingrove replaced her as Executive Director in 2015. Wingrove’s last day as Executive Director will be in December, as she is planning to leave the SCCLFF.
“I’ve given the board and organization a long runway to help them find a replacement,” Wingrove said. “I care about this organization and I want it to be successful even though I’m moving on.”
One of Wingrove’s accomplishments as Executive Director for the SCCLFF was boosting the fundraising by more than 50 percent.
“I spent a lot of time in the community establishing relationships with people and other community groups and talking to people about the Foundation and Friends’ goals and the library’s goals and met with a lot of decision makers in the community to discuss partnerships. All that community activity resulted in more gifts,” Wingrove said. “We’ve grown individual donations. We’ve grown the Librarypalooza (our gala fundraiser). We’ve increased book sales. We’ve increased corporate gifts. And we’ve received legacy and planned gifts.”
Wingrove also fostered new relationships with Silicon Valley companies that led to an increase in special library programs.
“When AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) moved to Santa Clara, I met with their community affairs officer and they were looking for ways to impact the Santa Clara community,” Wingrove said. “One of the opportunities they had for us was a virtual reality pilot. As a result of those meetings, we were one of the three libraries in the country to test AMD’s virtual reality equipment and educational programming. We have been partnering with AMD since 2017. We are still using AMD’s equipment to hold virtual reality labs called the ‘VR Development Workshop & Bootcamp’ at Central Park Library.
“Through one of our board members, I met the director of KLA Tencor Foundation and they were also looking at how they could make an impact on STEM education in the community,” Wingrove continued. “We talked to them about the Girls Who Code program that was going on at Central Park Library. They were very interested in supporting that program. We shared our vision to hold the Girls Who Code program at all three Santa Clara City Library branches. With KLA’s support we have been able to do that. KLA started to support last year’s Mission Branch Library’s Girls Who Code class. This year, they’re also supporting Northside Library’s Girls Who Code class. Central Park Library had another supporter, and KLA helped us completely fund Girls Who Code.”
Wingrove is also pleased with the fundraising she oversaw to support Read Santa Clara’s outreach program.
“When I started here, they had three different literacy programs at three different sites and now we’ve expanded that to do five literacy programs at seven or eight sites,” she said.
Currently a resident of Sunnyvale, Wingrove was raised in San Jose. She studied Political Science at San Diego State University and later graduated from Law School at the University of San Diego.
“Law school trains you to be an effective critical thinker and to pay attention to details,” Wingrove said. “And that helps me every day as Executive Director.”
The SCCLFF has announced its search for a new Executive Director. Interested candidates can visit www.lovethelibrary.org/executive-director-job-description for a job description.