Boston's Harvard Club. Sandwiches run about $12. Dinner entrees--French haute cuisine--cost around $18. Jacket and tie are required. And if a Harvard fundraiser thinks you're good for $100,000 or more, you might get taken there for free.

"The only way you raise money is with a personal call--letters go in the circular file," says Harvard fundraiser Ernest E. Monrad '51. "Then, you take them to lunch."

"You see them once, twice, maybe even three times," says Monrad, the alumni head of Harvard's Boston fundraising efforts.

Monrad is part of a core group of dedicated alumni who spend their time identifying--and wooing--graduates who have the money to make substantial capital gifts to Harvard.

And as Harvard's administrators consider plans for a massive University-wide fund drive, the success of alumni fundraising has become increasingly important.

The stakes are high. Last year, the University raised more than $185 million in voluntary support. And, fundraisers say, only about 10 percent of alumni account for 80 percent of all graduates' gifts.

The fundraiser's job is to find that 10 percent.

"The trick is to ask for as much as possible," says Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Fred L. Glimp'50. "If we asked all the people who give $5000 togive $250,000, you'd be surprised how many do."

But Monrad says Harvard takes a much moresystematic approach in targeting potential biggivers.

"Harvard people tend to be successful people.You have a pretty good dossier on people becausetheir salaries are published publicly," he says.

And, he adds, the University's developmentoffice in Holyoke Center has its own means ofamassing information.

"You'd be amazed at the dossiers the Harvardintelligence system has put together," Monradsays. "You're armed with a fair degree ofknowledge about them."

Says Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence, "IfI'm meeting someone for the first time, I knowsomething about [them], certainly when they werein the College, what they've done since then, thatkind of thing."

At Harvard's nine faculties, an average of 31percent of alumni gave last year. And Glimp saysthat figure is consistent with the success ratesat Yale University and the University ofPennsylvania. Some smaller schools--like DartmouthCollege and Princeton University--boast ratescloser to 40 percent, he says.

Key to Success