Growing & Giving
THE OKLAHOMA CITY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION CELEBRATES FIFTY YEARS
THE ESSENCE OF the Oklahoma City Community Foundation can perhaps be summarized by the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Following the 1995 attack, donations poured in from all over the country, and the OCCF which soon celebrates its fiftieth anniversary—was tasked with coordinating the philanthropic relief efforts, including a scholarship fund established to support the approximately 200 children who had lost one or both parents.
The money is still being cultivated and administered twenty-three years later, as the youngest of those children now enter graduate school. “We try to create a balance between encouraging and helping donors to give, as well as looking at things the community needs and understanding how we can help participate,” says Nancy Anthony, OCCF president.
When Anthony assumed leadership in 1985, soon after Oklahoma’s early-1980s oil bust, the OCCF held assets of about $19 million. People, and their money, were leaving the state for better economic climates. “How do we keep people in Oklahoma? Trying to keep those dollars here was really important,” she says.
Created in 1969 by community leaders, including oilman and philanthropist John E. Kirkpatrick, the OCCF ended its first year of operations with a net worth of $45,299 from one gift. The Kirkpatrick Match Challenge during its tenth anniversary raised $740,000, which Kirkpatrick and his wife, Eleanor, matched dollar for dollar. The family still has a matching-grant program in place, creating a culture of giving in Oklahoma, Anthony says.
Today, the OCCF’s Charitable Organization Endowment Program is the largest of its type in the United States, with nearly $1 billion in assets and more than 360 participating nonprofit organizations, benefitting causes such as arts and culture, education, social services, health, the environment, animals, and more.
Anthony’s analytical acuity—she has a PhD in biostatistics from the University of Oklahoma—plus her cultural understanding of central Oklahoma, makes her a strong leader, says Dr. Leslie Hudson, past trustee of OCCF. “The community foundation is a fairly complex organization. You have to have the ability to wrap your head around that, which Nancy does in a masterful way.”
The OCCF’s primary mission is to be a fiduciary for philanthropists who want to support central Oklahoma through endowments and other funds. Some donors know exactly how they want their money spent, and the OCCF merely manages it. Other donors want to give but are unsure about details, so the OCCF plays an advisory role. “We have a commitment to doing something that’s as close to what the donor originally intended as practical or possible,” Anthony says.
For example, a er local schoolteacher Margaret Annis Boys bequeathed her $1.5 million estate in 1991, the OCCF created a trust in her name. Boys simply asked that her gift be used to beautify public lands in Oklahoma County. Since then, the Boys Trust has supported nearly 300 public beautification projects. “To work with people who are really generous and want to give back—and to figure out how to help them—is very rewarding,” Anthony says.
The OCCF helped fund Oklahoma City’s 2013 Parks Master Plan, developed by national firm Wallace, Roberts & Todd, and gave $95,000 to assist Oklahoma City’s parks and recreation department to create an inventory of the city’s 19,000-plus tree canopy in 2016.
“[The OCCF] has been an invaluable partner for a long time,” says Doug Kupper, City of Oklahoma City parks and recreation director. “Nancy Anthony is a great civic leader. She understands the city.”