On the morning of April 19, 1995, a bomb exploded in a truck parked at the entrance of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Four blocks away, Nancy Anthony ’73 M.A., ’74 M.Phil. felt the ground shake beneath her. In her office, tiles fell from the ceiling, and there was dust everywhere.
The bombing — which killed 168 people and injured another 680 — was a total shock not only to her as a longtime resident of the state’s capital and largest city but to the organization she oversaw, the Oklahoma City Community Foundation (OCCF).
At the foundation, where she was executive director at the time, Anthony was used to working with donors who wanted to help the Oklahoma City community. But the foundation wasn’t exactly in the business of disaster relief. Within days, that changed.
“No, we were not going to go down there and dig through the rubble,” she remembered recently. “We weren’t going to sit at the Red Cross and hold people’s hands. But we could try to coordinate the services that were going to be necessary for these people after those first few weeks.”
Our role was not to compensate people. Our goal was to try to help people recover and move forward.
In the aftermath of the bombing, the foundation became critical to Oklahoma City’s recovery. As donations poured into the foundation from around the world, it was tasked with assisting the mayor’s office, and later the governor’s office, in managing those donations to support the victims with immediate medical needs, counseling, housing, and funeral expenses.
“Our role was not to compensate people,” she said. “Our goal was to try to help people recover and move forward.”
Within the first year after the bombing, the foundation received nearly $12 million from donors nationwide to help victims’ families and survivors. Under Anthony’s leadership, the foundation was able to help more than 1,200 people impacted by death or critical injury related to the bombing.
That period marked a new path for the foundation — and for Anthony. Over the course of 38 years, she transformed OCCF into one of the most consequential philanthropic institutions in the region.
From Yale to Oklahoma
Growing up in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, a small city in the center of that state, Nancy Anthony learned the importance of community early on in life. As a teenager, she was accepted at Vanderbilt University, in neighboring Tennessee, where she developed an interest in mathematics.
That eventually led her to pursue a graduate degree in statistics at Yale, where in the early 1970s she was one of only a handful of female students within the statistics department. Anthony spent a lot of time looking at large data sets to understand the relationships between the variables using computers — then a relatively new area of study. In fact, she used those skills to help the undergraduate admissions office analyze incoming classes.
Soon after completing her M.Phil, Anthony and her husband, Robert, moved to Oklahoma City in his home state. For 10 years, she focused on raising her four children and embedded herself within the community as a volunteer with the city’s Metropolitan Library Commission. But she started itching to get back to work.
Anthony eventually learned about OCCF, which had become a hub for charitable giving and impact in the city since its founding in 1969. Community foundations are grantmaking public charities dedicated to improving the lives of people in a specific geographic area.
The foundation had been started by John Kirkpatrick, an oilman and philanthropist who wanted to provide a way for people in his community to make life better for their neighbors. In 1985, Anthony became its executive director. With her years of experience serving on the library commission and other volunteer boards, she was already well-suited for the role.
Nancy Anthony, third from left, with OCCF staff members involved in support efforts following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
At the time, she didn’t know much about endowments or fundraising. But her experience at Yale and in academia equipped her with computer science skills that helped her revamp the nonprofit public charity’s databases, one of her first accomplishments as executive director.
“I was only there [at Yale] for two years,” she said. “But it made me realize how important very high-quality academic work was and the impact it can have, and I was able to bring that back to Oklahoma City.”
Helping people heal
Under Anthony’s leadership, OCCF became a leader among community foundations nationwide. When she began her tenure, the foundation had $19 million in assets and just one other full-time employee. By the time she retired in 2022, its staff included 47 full-time employees, and it distributed an average of $46 million annually to charitable organizations across Oklahoma City.
While at OCCF, Anthony was able to create and grow its endowed funds. More than 400 organizations now participate in the foundation’s Nonprofit Endowment Program, making it among the largest of its kind in the United States. The foundation also launched and expanded a wide range of other initiatives, including scholarship programs, grantmaking, and community efforts focused on issues like parks and public spaces, literacy, and wellness.
“We felt like we could work with donors and let them determine what needs in the community they wanted to support, and we would try to help them be as effective as possible,” she said.
Bob Blackburn first met Anthony in 1988 as he was climbing the leadership ladder at the Oklahoma Historical Society, an organization dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing Oklahoma history. Together, the two collaborated on strategies to blend privately donated funds with state-appropriated funds for both short-term needs and long-term sustainability. Anthony also helped create an endowment for the organization that has since grown to more than $12 million.
“She channeled good intentions into lasting outcomes, served as a voice for those who needed help, and shaped public opinion about priorities to deal with challenges and seize opportunities,” said Blackburn, now retired director of the historical society. “Nancy earned people’s trust, and in return, she never shirked her responsibility to serve the greater good without demanding the spotlight or seeking public recognition.”
The Oklahoma Historical Society was one of the countless organizations Anthony supported through the foundation. During her 38 years as executive director, the foundation disbursed more than $640 million to worthy charitable organizations across the state of Oklahoma, including after the bombing.
“The Oklahoma City Community Foundation was essential in the aftermath of the 1995 bombing, in that it was the only local institution with the capacity, reputation, and leadership to manage the many donations that poured in from around the world to support the victims’ immediate medical needs as well as their long-term expenses,” said Nancy Coats-Ashley, a retired district court judge and former trustee of the foundation. “OCCF’s reputation for integrity and trustworthiness under Nancy Anthony’s leadership provided people the assurance that the funds would be properly applied to their intended purpose, to meet the extensive needs of the victims, even if doing so required many years of active stewardship.”
Six years after that tragedy, Anthony drew on that experience to help families and survivors of another one: the Sept. 11 attacks. For two years, she consulted charitable organizations in New York City on how to best use funds to serve people in the aftermath.
“That was a very important experience for me, to work with those people and to bring what we had done in Oklahoma City,” she said.
She added: “You’re dealing with families where something awful had happened to them, and you had to help them begin to rebuild their lives. This is not about just handing out money. This is really about trying to do the things that help people move on with their lives.”
Anthony retired from OCCF three years ago but keeps active in the Oklahoma City community, having now served on the library commission for more than 40 years. Over the years, Anthony served on other volunteer boards as well as coached several softball teams for her four daughters.
As both an executive leader and longtime volunteer, Anthony helped nurture a culture of giving in the community that will benefit Oklahoma City for years to come.
Nancy Anthony, left, with OCCF staff member Laura Moon, during a “Musical Swings” event celebrating the foundation’s 50th anniversary in 2018.
“There’s an old expression about blooming where you’re planted,” she said. “That’s what I was able to do here.”
