It isn't always cheap to serve your alma mater.

The five-year, $350-million Harvard Campaign has 23 men and women on its executive committee. Twenty-one of them, including President Bok, gave more than $100,000 each to the Campaign--in fact, 14 of the committee members parted with $1 million or more to help out the University.

That's not a coincidence.

Gifts

One of the biggest reasons for the historic success of the fund drive--which raised $356 million for Harvard--was the campaign's strategy of involving potential major donors in the leadership of the drive.

The program, which ended December 31 with more than 57,000 donations, will help shore up inflation-croded faculty salaries and student financial aid, as well as finance a laundry list of renovations around the University.

In assembling volunteer leadership for a drive like the Harvard Campaign, "you would be looking for people who were generous" to lead it, explains Director of Major Gifts William H. Boardman. "The most effective fundraisers are people who have already given."

The 21 large gifts provided by the executive committee were among some 470 gifts of more than $100,000 to the drive. In fact, according to Boardman, some 62 percent of the total pledges came from less than I percent of the 57,000 donors. As of Monday, donors had paid up 71.9 percent of the total pledged, according to campaign spokesman David W. Johnson '68.

When the going got rough last January and donations began to slow, the 23 members of the executive committee and four other wealthy alumni came up with an additional $25 million, in the form of a 'challenge fund.'

Under the ground rules of the challenge, which has also been used successfully at Dartmouth and Princeton, the 27 benefactors would match every two dollars of new giving with a dollar of their own. At the time of the fund's announcement, the campaign total stood at just over $275 million, meaning that the rest of Harvard's friends had to come up with $50 million in 11 months.

They did, although things got very close near the end. With just 80 days left in the drive, the campaign still needed to rustle up $22 million--a staggering $250,000 a day.

Again, it was major donors--officially classified as giving $100,000 and up--who care through for Harvard. Of course, many of those gifts, explains Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Fred L. Glimp '50, had been in the works for a while "I don't think we had any rabbits in the hat It was just a lot of hard work," says Glimp, noting that a big gift almost always has a lengthy "gestation period" between the time a prospective donor is first contacted and when he ultimately signs the check.

While the breakdowns for each goal the campaign sought to meet are still being tabulated, according to Director of University Development Thomas M. Reardon, it is clear that the campaign has strengthened Harvard in a variety of areas It has:

* increased the student financial aid endowment by $45 million.

* increased the endowment for professors' salaries by $65 million