Just how much is the love of Harvard alumni for their alma mater worth? The University is betting it will be worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars over the next five years. Assuming the Corporation formally agrees--which now seems almost certain--Harvard will launch a five-year, $250-million fund drive some time this fall, a grand scheme that administrators hope will bolster Harvard's massive $1.4 billion endowment in the face of relentless inflation.

The drive didn't spring forth, full grown and armed, from anyone's head; the idea has floated back and forth between Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) offices and University fund-raising centers for at least two years. But the drive only began to take definite form in recent months and now awaits nothing but Corporation approval--expected late this spring--before the appeals for money can start. Harvard's development officials are already establishing a network of volunteers in each class and geographical area who will be ready to comb their classmates for money the moment the drive officially opens--perhaps after a two-day or longer stopover in Cambridge for training and instruction on just where the money they raise will go and why Harvard needs it.

Why does proverbially rich Harvard need so much money so fast? And where will it all go? The last major University fund drive--the Campaign for Harvard College in 1958, which raised $82 million--financed expansion and left tangible results in its wake, including Holyoke Center. This time around, the bulk of the money, earmarked chiefly for the College to finance faculty salaries, student aid and academic reform, will disappear into bank accounts and endowment investments. There won't be any new buildings for generous contributors to plant their names on.

Though you can't see the College's problems on a walk through the Yard, administrators emphasize the size and the seriousness of Harvard's needs. Most students have already met the chief culprit, inflation, through burgeoning annual increases in college costs. But cost hikes reveal only part of the problem.

Inflation eats away at the real value of the Harvard endowment, the guarantor of the University's immortality, even as the number of dollars in the portfolio reaches new heights. A major goal of the fund drive will be to raise money to endow chairs for current Faculty members, so the Faculty can re-allocate the money it now uses to pay them. Roughly $80 million in fund drive revenues will probably go towards this end, the largest single item on the fund drive's list, according to tentative figures supplied by Peter F. Clifton '49, director of the Harvard College Fund.

As Robert E. Kaufmann '62, FAS associate dean for finance and administration, explains, a donor pays for a program or a tenured chair and gives enough capital to keep the program running each year. But inflation eats away at the value of the income from that capital year by year. Because Harvard remains committed to the program, the Faculty must move in and make up the difference. This erosion affects every endowed program and chair under the Faculty's wing, and more and more of the Faculty's unrestricted income--money it may spend as it wishes--becomes tied up in these restricted uses.

Besides securing the endowment against inflation, the fund drive will help combat an overall decline in the real value of the average faculty income. "One long-range question is whether we're going to be able to attract the same quality of faculty," Thomas O'Brien, vice president for financial affairs, says.

Planners also hope higher faculty salaries will make academic jobs more attractive to graduating students who now flock to lucrative professional jobs. The fund drive will "specifically provide" for increased funding of junior faculty positions, says Alfred M. Gibbens, director of development.

Whatever its long-range effect on the endowment and faculty salaries, inflation hits hardest at students and their parents, who feel its effects when term bill time comes around. To ensure that Harvard can continue its policy of providing financial support for all students who show they need it, the fund drive will set aside about $32 million for loans, scholarships and work-study programs.

The College pulled through the mid-'70s by raising tuition and cutting corners, and now it has no choice but "to moderate further tuition increases through a new burst of capital," Kaufmann says. Although Harvard has not been "cavalier" about passing increased costs on to students, as Kaufmann puts it, the University has recently come to depend more and more on income from students.

"The Harvard student body today bears more of the University's costs than the student ten years ago," O'Brien says.

A net increase in the size of the undergraduate student body during the '70s because of the admission of more women helped bring in more tuition money for a while; but the growth has leveled off, Kaufman says.

Officials have had their eyes for some time on the Harvard "middle income" group of students whose family incomes fall between $20,000 and $35-40,000 annually. They fear that more of these students whom Harvard accepts will decide to go elsewhere, threatening the diversity of future College classes. Fund drive planners hope their efforts will keep enough aid money available for these students, while admissions and financial aid officers continue heavily publicizing Harvard's aid and loan programs.

The largest single items in the fund drive are faculty salaries and student aid, but together they add up to less than half of the total amount to be raised. The other "lines" in the proposed drive budget include:

Funding the Core Curriculum. Roughly $24 million is slated for this, the most glamorous and concrete of the drive's goals. It is not clear right now exactly where the money will go; but course development, administrative costs, and classroom renovation for the Core are sure to cost the Faculty a good deal.

Enlarging athletic facilities, financing the arts, and preserving Memorial Church. The capital drive will incorporate "mini-drives" already underway for Memorial Church and the Soldiers Field athletic complex.

Renovating the Houses. During the '70s the Faculty skimped on building maintenance to try to hold down costs, Kaufmann says. The drive provides for work on housing to the tune of about $12 million.

Providing money for teaching innovations. The drive earmarks about $6 million to fund experimental teaching programs, as well as to support the Danforth Center for Teaching and Learning.

Preserving libraries, museums, and laboratories. The fund drive will incorporate the Fogg Museum's "mini-drive" currently underway, and will provide money for library upkeep. It also seems the Peabody Museum is slated to receive some money from the drive, after the recent controversy over the sale of a collection of paintings to pay for a conservation system for the museum's collections. The total funding for libraries and museums from the drive will amount to about $33 million.

Establishing a financial base for the public policy program. The only part of the fund drive that will largely benefit graduate schools alone will probably receive about $20 million all told.

Funding current operation of the College. While the drive is going on, the Harvard College Fund will almost certainly suspend its annual campaign. The drive provides $20-25 million to the Faculty--$4-5 million each year of the capital drive--to replace the College Fund's annual contribution to the FAS budget.

The relation between a major capital drive and the annual College Fund drive, which relies on reunions and a network of class representatives, created a sticky problem for planners. "The first rule of fund-raising is always keep your unrestricted annual giving going even while a capital drive is on," Clifton says.

But Harvard officials saw a unique opportunity to take advantage of the field-tested College Fund organization by class and area, which has broken fund-raising records for each of the past several years. "Our reunions are so strong that we were terrified of the competition between reunion giving and a capital drive," Clifton said.

So, pending Corporation approval, the College Fund's annual drive will be suspended and its network of alumni put to work for the capital drive. "A lot of pros and our colleagues in the Ivy League think we're crazy, but we feel this will simplify the drive for our alumni--there won't be any 'double-ask' and we won't have two parallel organizations," Clifton comments.

The fund drive and the College Fund might develop a "destructive rivalry" if both sought alumni money at the same time, Gibbens says. Some officials suggest that it was just this trouble which plagued Yale's recent capital drive.

Thomas M. Reardon, director of communications in the development office, says running a capital campaign organized by alumni classes is a new idea as yet untried by other universities. "We'll tell you in five years whether it's a good one," he adds.

As now planned, the fund drive's large umbrella will cover not only the College Fund but all of the University's half-dozen "mini-drives" as well, excepting the campaigns for the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Villa I Tatti, Harvard's center for Renaissance studies in Florence, neither of which appeal to traditional Harvard contributors. The mini-drives" were the mainstay of University capital fundraising throughout the '70s and effectively focused donors' attentions on specific problems--but the College's basic needs did not receive their "due attention," Reardon says.

Fred L. Glimp '50, who took over last month as vice president for alumni affairs and development, will oversee the drive and try to keep relations between alumni fundraisers and Faculty planners cordial. Glimp says he sees his responsibility as "holding all the pieces together."

Even when the contributors are as prosperous as Harvard alumni tend to be, how easy will raising a quarter of a billion dollars in a stagnant economy be? Officials agree that only a troubled economy could cause the Corporation to decide against launching the drive. "If it gets much worse than a mild recession, we'd be crazy to kick off a drive," Glimp says. "If the drive gets delayed or put off, a really severe economic downturn would be the cause," according to Gibbens.

Ideally, Gibbens adds, the drive would start when the national economy was strong, persevere through any slump in the middle years, and end on an upswing. "But if you wait for a good time to start, there's never a good time," he says.

Clifton, however, believes the national economy may go through two or three cycles of good and bad times during a five-year drive. "I don't think the drive leadership will set their sights on national economic conditions--only a major national or international crisis could delay it," he says.

The fund drive also faces a host of public-relations and personality problems. An appeal for endowment money is bound to be less enticing to prospective donors than a dramatic expansion campaign. On top of that, Harvard suffers from what Kaufmann calls "the curse of endowment"--the tendency for people to look at the one-and-a-half billion dollar endowment and ask why the University needs more money.

For the drive to work its leaders must put together a "package of attractive donation possibilities." Donors want to pay for specific items, Gibbens says.

"You can sell a gimmick better than you can sell something very basic like we're trying to do," Glimp says.

Fundraisers doubt the rise of Harvard student activism on issues like South Africa will affect their drive. "We can't plan for things that we can't influence," Gibbens says. Glimp points out that alumni contributions remained steady through the period of student protests in the late '60s and early '70s.

Despite reservations about the national economy and the appeal of a drive that doesn't involve much "bricks and mortar," administrators seem sure the drive will go ahead as planned and are optimistic about its chances for success. Since last fall, College Fund volunteers have been screening potential contributors across the country to gauge how much money might be available and to find out whether alumni might resist a capital drive right now. By next fall about 3000 alumni will have gotten the once-over; and so far, the prospects look good.

In the meantime, the machinery awaits only the Corporation's go-ahead--and that decision may come as early as the final Corporation meeting this year, in late May or early June. Glimp says, "There won't be any surprises" when the Corporation announces its decision; and alumni can begin hitting up their classmates for money.