This also enabled him to keep his company in the front of his field technologically. He successfully competed against subsidized Japanese companies and from U.S. government-funded entities. Upon Don Bently's death, his son Christopher took over his father's businesses. A significant amount of Bently's rotordynamic research efforts were about rotor dynamic stability. In 2001, he established ISCORMA, (International Symposium on Stability Control of Rotating Machinery), a bi-annual industry event. Bently was an active organizer and participant in all ISCORMA conferences until his death. His expertise also led to work for NASA. He spent 2½ years studying the area where the oxygen and hydrogen fuel pumps connect to the main engines on the space shuttle following the January 1986 challenger disaster. Bently was a leader of and major financial supporter if The Institute of World Politics. Bently purchased the Marlatt Mansion and two adjacent townhouses for the Institute. For the first 15 years, he rented the building to the Institute for $1.00 per year. He paid several million dollars to gut and completely renovate the townhouses and later donated them to the Institute. He also endowed the Donald E. Bently Chair of Political Economy. Bently donated several million dollars to Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, California, which in Spring 2003 named the Donald E. Bently Center for Engineering Innovation to honor his substantial contributions. He supported local schools in Carson Valley, and gave generously to St. Gall Catholic Church, Carson Valley United Methodist Church, and a battered women's shelter. He donated land for the Western Nevada College campus in Gardenville, Nevada. He helped fund the building of the new museum facility built in 2010 at the U.S. Navy Seabee Museum at Port Hueneme, California. In 2005, he helped create a conservation easement with the Nature Conservancy that preserved the Kirman Field in northern Douglas County. He also supported the Friends of Pine Creek Grist Mill, Muscatine Junior College and its Alumni Association, Muscatine Community College, the Lucille A. Carver Mississippi River Environmental Research Station Fund, and the University of Iowa. Bently was recognized with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Frederick P. Smarro Award and R. Tom Sawyer Award, and the N. O. Mylestad Award from the Technical Committee on Vibration and Sound of the ASME Design Engineering Division. He was a Fellow and Life Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In 1992, he was made a foreign member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Engineering in Russia.