When pressed on the issue of whether men's and women's sports are funded equally, the Department of Athletics says the contributions of "friends' groups" account for the differences between men's and women's athletics.

Friends' groups are alumni organizations that make regular contributions to specific sports. That money is part of the athletic department budget, but department officials administer the funds.

Although they often deal with tens of thousands of dollars, the friends are not registered with local or state authorities. The nebulous organizations have no legal standing. And since contributions depend mainly on the whims and deep pockets of alumni, teams have different resources to support their activities.

A report obtained by The Crimson details just how different--and just how closely related to gender--contributions from the friends' groups can be.

According to the report, men's teams received three times as much in friends' contributions as their female counterparts. And of the eight varsity teams to receive more than $15,000 in contributions, two--for crew and for squash and tennis--were women's teams.

Alumni pockets were deepest for men's crew and football. The men's crew team dwarfs all other sports in independent funds, receiving $67,314 in contributions during the last academic year, and maintaining an endowment income of $53,601. The football team received $57,645, although its endowment yielded just $1,907.

Department officials have also said less money is devoted by the department to women's sports in general because women comprise only 35 percent of Harvard's athletes. But in friends' giving, participation does not account for enormous differences in contributions to different squads.

The men's track team received contributions totalling $45,311, while the women received $600 in such donations, according to the report. Men's track averaged 48 participants during the indoor and outdoor seasons, while the women averaged 34.

Also, men's crew received nearly four times more in donations than women's crew, but the men's team had less than twice as many rowers. 151 men and 79 women participated on crew teams, according to the report.

And in basketball, where participation was virtually identical, the men received six times as much money ($9,552) as the women ($1,650).

But contributions were not always biased toward men's teams, though. In ice hockey, the differences in contributions were in proportion to discrepancies in participation. The men's program received $18,828 and had 52 participants, while the women got $8,573 and had 20 athletes. And gifts to men's and women's squash and tennis both totalled about $50,000, while donations to the women's lacrosse team outpaced those to the men's team, $6,960 to $4,712.

Some women's friends' groups--including women's basketball, field hockey and soccer--have had to make large fundraising efforts to offset differences in contributions, many of which have been fairly successful, according to the report and coaches.

The friends' group for women's soccer garnered nearly $9,000 from fundraising, the report says, far outpacing the $500 raised by the men's soccer team. When fundraising is factored in with "unsolicited" gifts, the money brought in by friends of women's soccer is slightly more than double the money the men's program draws.

The fundraising efforts do not always achieve such parity, however. The report shows the friends' group for the women's swimming team, for example, raised $14,878 last year, bringing to $25,000 the amount of extra-budgetary money supporting the program. That was still half as much as the amount the men's team brought in from contributions and fundraising.

Women's coaches and athletes have complained about the amount of time they have to spend fundraising. And officials--including Senior Associate Director for Athletics Patricia W. Henry, the department's top-ranking woman--have reportedly suggested combining some friends' groups to promote equity.

The department report also includes 26 pages on the Harvard-Radcliffe Foundation for Women's Athletics. Much of this information is dated, and includes testimonials from and pictures of women athletes.

In December, Henry said the foundation was instrumental in helping to even out funding discrepancies caused by contributions to the friends' group. For 1992, the foundation received $21,351 in donations and $19,102 in what the report terms "endowment income.

However, the report describes a foundation that though financially healthy, lacks the funds to offset huge discrepancies in donations by different friends' groups.

If all of the contributions the foundation received in 1992 were given to the women's crew team, men's crew would still hold a $27,000 lead in donations.