Trustees and Staff

Donald E. Pray

Thursday, April 21, 2016, friends and fellow trustees honored Don for his long service to Philanthropy — at the Bernsen Foundation, with the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, and for his numerous personal gifts of time and expertise to many local organizations. Proclamations honoring Don's personal and professional philanthropy were presented by Mayor Dewey Bartlett, the Tulsa City Council and the Tulsa County Commissioners.

In November 2020, Voices of Oklahoma added Don to its collection of Oklahoma oral histories. This link will take you to the full interview collected by VOK founder John Erling.

Trustees

Melissa P. Easterling
Barbara H. Pray
Donald E. Pray
W. Bland Williamson

Staff

David M. Zemel, Director

David has extensive experience in nonprofit direct services, management, planning, develop­ment and philanthropy. While working for two private foundations prior to joining the Grace and Franklin Bernsen Foundation, he helped design international, national, regional and local initi­atives resulting in grants in excess of $400 million. He has reviewed thousands of program and capital funding applications and provided numerous training programs, workshops, coaching and college coursework on program planning, special event fundraising and grant writing.

As Executive Director of the United Way of Bartholomew County (Columbus, IN), he directed six successful United Way campaigns and supported both campaign and allocations programs as Vice President for Planning & Research at the United Way of Greater St. Louis. For more than 13 years, David served on the part-time Human Services faculty at the St. Louis Community Colleges and taught marketing and development courses at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University.

As principal at On Track Consulting, LLC, he worked with a variety of nonprofits on planning, organizational development, marketing and fundraising projects. Notable clients have included Parkside Psychiatric Hospital & Clinic, the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, the Grace and Franklin Bernsen Foundation and Voices of Oklahoma.

David has served on numerous community boards including the Community Service Council of Greater Tulsa, The Iron Gate, Volunteer Central and the Eastern Oklahoma Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals. He has reviewed federal funding applications for several federal departments and serves as a peer reviewer for the National Standards of Excellence Institute in Maryland. He has an M.S.W. from Washington University in St. Louis and a B.S. in Education from the University of Missouri in Columbia.

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In Memoriam: May their memory be a blessing.

Trustees

Donald F. Marlar (2012)

John D. Strong, Jr. (2015)

 

Staff

Margaret J. Skyles (2015)