The College occasionally sends emissaries out Rochester's way--usually professors who speak on their specialties, to show alumni that alma mater is putting their contributions to good use. "We get big names sometimes, like Reischauer and Fairbank, but who the big names are changes from year to year and each year every community wants those people," Trueheart says.
In the fall of 1981 Rochester may be in for some big-name visitors indeed, names like Bok and Rosovsky. Peter F. Clifton '49, executive director of the Harvard College Fund, says Harvard's $250 million, five-year capital campaign is tentatively scheduled to "kick off" in Rochester then, with a big dinner for local alumni and top brass from the University.
Fund-raising is the flip-side of alumni social activities, and officials in Cambridge are well aware that active local alumni groups are a valuable way for them to stay in touch with potential contributors. Harvard clubs like Rochester's usually don't participate directly in fund-raising--that's left to local class agents of the Harvard College Fund. But more often than not, an alumnus who wants to stay in touch with his classmates also feels close enough to the College to want to support it financially.
In Rochester, Russell A. Sibley '44, whose family founded the city's main department store, has been the College Fund representative and an active fundraiser for many years--he managed the local effort of the Campaign for Harvard College in the 1950s, Harvard's last major capital drive, and last year ran his class's 35th reunion as well. Rider says the Harvard Club has left most of the fund-raising work to him. "You need to have one enthusiastic guy like Russ Sibley to keep things going and to keep other people interested," he says.
The new capital campaign hasn't shaken Rochester up yet. At a luncheon meeting last January about 20 local alumni gathered to evaluate the prospect for donations, but no one has given the Campaign much thought since. And the Harvard Club doesn't expect it to cause a major upheaval, either. "The only way it might really affect us is by making it harder for us to get people to pay dues, with the competition from the fund drive," Rider says.
The drive hasn't geared up in the Rochester area, Clifton says, and local reports bear him out. Sibley says, "I have not heard of any activity in this area affecting the fund drive, period." Development officials have earmarked the first year-and-a-half of the Campaign for gifts of more than $25,000, and Sibley says that rules out practically every potential contributor in the area.
Sibley has asked not to manage the Campaign in the Rochester area since he just finished work on his 35th reunion, Clifton says. Sibley says he thinks the two local alumni who had organized the January luncheon may have taken charge of the local campaign.
But Hollister Spencer '38, one of the two, says, "I've done nothing since I chaired the luncheon," adding that his co-chairman, Hulbert W. Tripp '29, might know more.
Tripp, however, says, "All I did was host a group of people last year. At that time I made it clear I could not be in charge. The best fellow to talk to would be Russ Sibley."
Still, though confusion seems to prevail among local fund-raisers, development officials have plenty of time to iron out problems before the drive officially begins in the Rochester area. Those officials are confident about both the Campaign's overall chances for success--despite gloomy economic forecasts--and its potential to attract contributions from alumni in every area of the country.
One fund-raising expert in Rochester, who prefers to remain unidentified, says the Campaign's overall prospects are good, but doubts its chances in Rochester and the surrounding counties. "I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for gifts to come in from here," he says. "I just don't think the money is there."
"I've used up my credibility. Our pitch out here in the '50s was that this was a once-in-a-lifetime hard bite. We twisted some arms then. We'd say to a student who had had a scholarship, 'Look, Harvard helped you out, now you help Harvard out,'" he says.
He cautions that one or two unexpected big local contributions could belie his prediction. "There may be three guys out here with a big interest in the preservation of Memorial Church, for all I know," he says. "The Preservation of Memorial Church" is one of the smaller items on the list of needs the Development Office has distributed to potential contributors--a list that also includes the larger goals of endowing faculty seats and student financial aid, renovating buildings, and funding educational programs like the Core Curriculum.
University officials normally raise large amounts towards a campaign's goal before its formal announcement--as of last spring the figure for this drive already exceeded $25 million. Officials use this advance figure as some indication of the drive's chances, and so far they have been encouraged.
"Your easy money, your big money, your loyal money is up front," the Rochester fundraiser says. "It's when you get into the trenches--in places like Detroit, and Dallas, and Rochester--that you find out where you really are." Alumni fundraisers and development officials will climb into those trenches for five years starting this fall, and whether local areas like Rochester prove generous or not, it's bound to be a long battle.
"It's unclear whether we're considered part of the big Northeast area or the boondocks-I guess we're in the middling boonies." --Harry P. Trueheart III