Gifts That Keep Giving

“A gift to Harvard is a gift to the world," declared Robert G. Stone Jr. ’45, L.H.D. ’03, the longtime chairman of the Committee on University Resources, in presenting his annual report at the HAA meeting on the afternoon of Commencement day. Among the donations that Harvard wants to use "to make the world a better place," Stone noted in particular those from this year’s anniversary classes. The class of 1989 raised a record fifteenth-reunion gift of $4.7 million. The class of 1949, who raised $30.781 million in 1999 — the record for a fiftieth reunion in the twentieth century — set a new record for fifty-fifth reunions with a gift of $11.3 million. The class of 1969, despite graduating, as Stone noted, in a time of turmoil in the world and in Cambridge, contributed $12.6 million as their thirty-fifth-reunion gift; the fiftieth reunioners, the class of 1954, Stone said, presented $22,000,054. And the class of 1979 set a new twenty-fifth reunion record with $36.3 million. In all, Stone announced, more than 30,000 alumni contributed to the Harvard College Fund during the past fiscal year. Gifts flowed to professional schools as well: the Business School has raised $450 million, or 90 percent of its current capital-campaign goal with a year yet to go, while the Law School, with $196 million already in hand, is just under halfway to its campaign goal and has four years to go. (For details of major financial-aid contributions to the University this year, see "Addition by Subtraction.")