Aside from the University office, all 10 schools have their own development offices--which have been known in the past to compete with each other more than Harvard would like to admit. Also involved are hundreds of alumni volunteers who are responsible for most of the actual requests for money.

The Start of the Process

Much like the FBI, the UDO keeps detailed files on people it's interested in--i.e., all alumni. Harvard's files, however, only contain a variety of information focused around the financial status and general interests of the alumni.

According to John C. Whitehead, former president of the Board of Overseers, "the two keys to fundraising are research and cultivation."

The University uses the UDO information to guide its fundraising efforts.

"The most basic job of the office is to set priorities for the University then go out and test them against real world priorities," UDO Director Thomas P. Reardon '60 says. "Development forces the University to carefully examine its priorities because there is only so much money."

What makes Harvard so successful in the field, according to all sources contacted is the research system it has established, which Monrad calls "legendary."

The information in alumni files ranges from the activities the person participated in while a student to his or her present salary and make of car.

"They have an incredible system where anything that comes out in the press ends up in an alumnus' file--including stuff from local papers in places like Akron, Ohio," a development employee says. "The people are amazing at picking out Harvard alumni."

The office checks major news dailies--including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe--and then relies on alumni to send in other information from other news sources.

Reardon says, however, the major source of information for the office is the questionnaires the University sends to all its alumni every five years.

He emphasizes that all the information in alumni files comes from the public domain and no attempt to gain confidential information is ever made.

But the office goes beyond questionnaires and newspaper sources when compiling its files.

An example of the process at work is described by Monrad: "I read prospectuses through my work, so I know how much a lot of them [classmates] are making and I send them [Harvard] proxies I come across. It gives you a good start, you also know who lives in Wayland and who lives in the slums and who drives a Mercedes."

As well as compiling files, the University's office has screening sessions to get graduates' input on their classmates.

In these sessions, particularly common during reunion years, groups of alumni are brought in to review lists of their classmates who they know, in terms of giving ability. At the meetings, the UDO figures out who would be most likely to "rattle the purses," in Monrad's words.