Often lost amid the discussion of Harvard's wealth and massive endowment are the University's smaller schools, which are often forced to adopt innovative strategies in order to raise what would only be a drip into the University's colossal tubs.

While the small schools have been quite successful thus far in meeting their goals as part of their capital campaigns, missing funding goals can have consequences that larger schools could not imagine.

The University's three smallest schools--Education, Divinity and Design--often face completely different problems in their efforts to raise money, but they are united in the need to vigorously promote their ideologies rather than simply relying on the affluence and good will of their graduates.

"I think it is always a challenge to raise money in cases where alumni are not in careers which are very remunerative," says Thomas M. Reardon, vice-president for alumni affairs and development.

Small Schools, Small Pools

The University's endowment currently stands at $9.1 billion, according to the most recent Financial Report to the Board of Overseers.

In contrast, the Graduate School of Design's (GSD) endowment is a mere $127 million, a large amount for the average design school, but only 1.4 percent of the University's overall endowment.

The five-year capital campaign, which began in the spring of 1994, aims to raise $2.1 billion University-wide, but only $135 million is intended to be raised for the three smallest graduate schools combined.

The campaign goal for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is $965 million; the goals of the smaller schools range from $30 million at the Design School to $60 million at the Education School. The Divinity School goal is $45 million.

Hence the $17.2 million gift that the GSD received from John M. Loeb '24 represents 57 percent of the school's goal; the same gift in the FAS would only be 1.7 percent of its goal. (A gift equivalent to 57 percent of the FAS goal would amount to $550 million.)

One of the largest private gifts ever to the Education School was a $2.5 million donation from Yashuhisa and Kimiko Tsuzuki to establish the Sada Tsuzuki professorship, which will focus on early childhood development.

In comparison, FAS has received several gifts in the tens of millions of dollars, funding marquee projects such as the Barker Center for the Humanities, the Maxwell-Dworkin computer science building, the restoration of Memorial Hall and the creation of Loker Commons.

Dudley F. Blodget, former dean of development at the GSE, said at the time of the Tsuzuki gift that the discrepancy between the larger and smaller schools is frustrating, but he points out that "you have to start somewhere."

Innovative Approaches

The three smaller schools differ from the other schools in that they have fewer alumni to solicit for funds and the professions for which they train--teaching, architecture and theology, for example--are generally not as lucrative as business, law or medicine.