"The key to the dollars is one's ability to get one or two or three highly significant gifts," says Marshall L. Berkman '58, reunion gift co-chair. "There's a tendency to think only of seven-figure gifts. But there is also an important set of gifts there between $10,000 and $100,000."

Like the building of the floats for Southern California's Tournament of Roses parade, alumni reunions begin even before the reunion week the previous year. Major reunion gift committees usually get organized even earlier, and some begin meeting and planning two years in advance of the reunions.

Berkman and the other co-chair, Robert C. Waggoner '58, say the class does better than others because it launches recruiting efforts from bases all around the country, instead of relying on an East Coast center like New York or Boston. The class has regional co-chairs charged with spearheading efforts in cities like Chicago and San Francisco.

"If someone in Milwaukee gets a call from Cambridge or Boston or New York, it might seem more remote," says H. George Mann '58, the regional gift chair for Chicago. "But if he gets a call from someone from the Midwest, psychologically, he feels less remote."

All reunion classes like to emphasize a personal approach to soliciting gifts. Many gift chairs say they try to match up prospective donors with solicitors who may be friends. And face-to-face meetings are practically protocol for any gift larger than $10,000.

"In many cases, it's not a call. It's a personal meeting," says Taylor. "Most people don't have to be heavily solicited. They see this as a time to repay Harvard for the rewards they got out of Harvard."

Soliciting friends can be awkward, and most recommend a straightforward approach in a casual setting.

"You do it by saying that you hope the College is as important to them as it is to you," says Robert S. November '58, regional gift chair for New York.

Small givers don't quite get the same treatment. They are solicited largely through phone drives and by people they never knew. The Class of 1958 has four "participation" chairs assigned to enhance participation in the class gift, but they, for the most part, run phone-a-thons out of Boston and New York.

No matter what their resources, each class asks each classmate to "stretch" in making contributions.

"We ask them to make a contribution that seems like a stretch now but may not necessarily be a stretch," says Taylor. "Obviously, someone who is a schoolteacher in the Midwest may not have the resources as someone working on Wall Street. But we have similar expectations based on participation."

Radcliffe classes often convince as many as 70 percent of their classmates to contribute, but the size of the gifts is substantially smaller. While Taylor says the Harvard Class of '68 is likely to approach $6 million, Ferrell P. McClean '68 and Susan S. Wallach '68, reunion gift co-chairs for the Radcliffe class, say they were content to exceed their goal of $200,000 in gifts.

"Between the two of us, we went through the class list and looked at their history of giving," says McClean. "We took our whole class and sent it off to everyone on the committee, to see who knows who. The best personal information was gleaned that way."

Strict rules regulate the organization of reunions and fundraising between Harvard and Radcliffe. For classes 1963 through 1975, Harvard may only solicit male graduates and Radcliffe can only raise funds from female graduates.

Beginning with the class of 1976, raising money is a free-for-all.