Thomas M. Reardon, director of the University'sOffice of Development, says the economic climateis not necessarily indicative of Harvard'sfundraising potential. He points out that theUniversity raised $206 million last year alone,the highest total in its history.

Reardon says the University will be able topresent a persuasive argument to donors based onthe rising costs of maintaining academicexcellence.

"I think the campaign is the result of arigorous academic review of what Harvard [will be]about over the next decade or more," Reardon says."It is not just the sense of, 'Let's see how muchmoney we can raise and what we can do with it.'It's just the opposite."

University officials say the money will be usedfor endowing professorships, funding academicprograms and research, renovating and constructingbuildings, restoring library collections,supporting financial aid programs and building theendowment.

Laying the Groundwork

Although officials are not identifying specificprojects yet, they are already laying thegroundwork for the campaign. Rudenstine has beennetworking with wealthy alumni across the countryand development officers are in the process ofbuilding a nucleus fund of donations.

Such a preliminary fund--which the experts calla "kitty"--is a standard part of most majorcapital campaigns and usually amounts toapproximately 30 percent of the anticipated total.

Progress on building the nucleus fund will giveRudenstine an idea of how much money Harvard canexpect to raise over an additional five years, andallow him to kickoff the campaign with a sizableportion of the total already in hand.

"Gift discussions have begun with...some alumniwho have been closely involved with theUniversity," says Reardon.

Vice President for Alumni Affairs Fred L. Glimp'50 says the University has already secured "afew" multi-million dollar pledges.

In addition, the development office hasorganized four task forces--made up of Harvarddevelopment officials and headed by Reardon andGlimp--to coordinate planning efforts across theUniversity and report to the centraladministration.

The committees will develop recommendations forrunning the more technical aspects of thecampaign: organizing a computerized informationsystem on donors and donations, laying outspecific themes of the campaign for the variousdivisions of the University, determining thefeasibility of the campaign's goals, and designingthe worldwide network of alumni volunteers.

Planners agree that individual alumni, asopposed to large corporations or charitablefoundations, will form the backbone of the effort.

"You tend to go back to the people who've beennice to you," says veteran fundraiser and longtimedonor Ernest Monrad '51. "The alumni will be theclue to this. I'm willing to bet that 80 percentof the money will come from the alumni."

And that means Harvard's fundraisers won't haveto worry as much about simultaneous fund drives atother universities.