Home Stretch

With 18 months remaining until its scheduled conclusion at the end of 1999, Harvard's $2.1-billion University Campaign is exceeding projections. As of April 30, according to Thomas M. Reardon, vice president for alumni affairs and development, the fund drive had raised $1.82 billion--87 percent of the total sought. That put the Campaign some nine months, or $180 million, ahead of its planned schedule. In response, University officials and deans now hope to meet certain unfulfilled goals and to secure more funds for priorities--financial aid, information technology--that have grown increasingly important since the Campaign plans were set in 1993.

Analyzing progress to date, Reardon notes that "the institution benefits a lot if it can define itself." The Campaign's integrated, University-wide academic plan--the first in Harvard history--makes it possible, Reardon says, for "donors who give a gift at any level that's significant for them, whether it's $500 or $5 million, to know what's important. Harvard has had a tough time saying that in the past, both by school and for the whole institution," given its tradition of independent faculties. "Now we're far from becoming an integrated institution," Reardon adds, "but we've become a coherent one."

As a result, 55 members of the Campaign executive committee--the people best able to "see the whole," as Reardon puts it--have contributed $370 million of the $1.82 billion raised. And giving across school boundaries has soared. Graduates of the College have given $130 million to parts of Harvard they did not attend, he says, and Business School alumni who were undergraduates elsewhere have contributed $45 million to other University units and programs. He views that money as "incremental" giving "done in a shared, collegial way, and it hasn't cost the donors' 'home' schools a dime"--a clear benefit of collaborative fundraising.

Other measures of the Campaign's health reflect what Reardon calls "heroic acts of generosity at all levels." More than 165,000 gifts have been received or pledged to date. And Harvard, he says, has had unprecedented success in overcoming a traditional weakness--securing the very largest gifts. The Campaign plan was predicated on 373 gifts of $1 million or more--38 of $10 million plus--totaling $1.4 billion. Through April 30, 347 such gifts were already in hand, accounting for more than $1.2 billion of Campaign receipts.

Turning from the aggregate figures to components, as shown in the chart on page 66, the schools of law (campaign completed in 1995), government, medicine, and public health have already exceeded their goals. The Graduate School of Design--which received a large deferred gift from the late John L. Loeb '24, LL.D. '71, and Frances Lehman Loeb--has nearly reached its target. The pace of fundraising at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and at the Business School has paralleled the Campaign as a whole. The education and divinity schools, both struggling to raise endowment funds for faculty positions and financial aid, are farthest from achieving their goals.

Certain Campaign goals remain unfulfilled. The biggest gaps are in FAS. The ambitious effort to create 40 new professorships is only half complete. (At $3.5 million each, Reardon says, "Those have been moving very slowly.") According to Ann E. Berman, FAS associate dean for finance, half the funds needed to construct the regional and international studies center, rehouse the government faculty, and renovate Littauer for the economics department remain to be raised. Nor has fundraising begun for a planned life-sciences building or the renovation of Lamont Library.

Library funds in general remain hard to raise, Reardon says: library renovation remains the divinity school's largest unfunded priority, for example. But a recent major gift (see "One for the Books," page 67) will allow work on the Widener renovation to proceed.

Finally, some $60 million remains to be raised for the University Fund, intended to give the president flexible resources to jump-start new or interfaculty academic programs and to sustain Harvard's less well endowed faculties, among other priorities.

Meetings with the deans will identify the Campaign's highest priorities for its final months, Reardon says. He foresees each school highlighting its most important new professorships, for instance, so special efforts can be made to secure the needed gifts. He also expects a refined list of end-of-Campaign priorities reflecting recently appointed deans' goals--possibly emphasizing continuing and executive education at the business and government schools--or needs that have evolved since the drive began. Among the latter: funds for technology (where Reardon sees the educational applications "unfolding with enormous potential and enormous costs"--far beyond what planners foresaw in the early 1990s) and the incremental costs of more generous financial-aid packages (see "Surging Yield," page 64).

Assuming that the list of priorities appeals to prospective donors, and that the financial markets remain strong, Reardon says about the $2.1-billion goal, "Can we do better? That's the challenge." He sees "lots of areas where we could make a qualitative difference to the educational process if we could do better."

Looking beyond 1999, Reardon says planning has already begun for Harvard's fundraising priorities post-Campaign. In the April FAS faculty meeting, President Neil L. Rudenstine made a commitment to secure funds for graduate-student aid and fellowships (see "Two More Years," page 66) well beyond the $32 million being raised in the Campaign. In a subsequent interview, he mentioned other priorities, including more endowed professorships, information technology, and expanded programs in the arts and engineering and applied sciences.

No matter what sum the Campaign ultimately produces, it has already provided "a very important strengthening of Harvard's financial base," Reardon says. And along the way, he says, the gargantuan effort has begun "changing the culture of the place, as the deans work together, share their plans, and collaborate at the top level, even as they focus on their own schools' excellence."