The University has begun the first wave of initiatives to raise money for graduate student aid and encourage public service, University President Lawrence H. Summers said yesterday.

Alums from the wealthiest of Harvard’s schools will be solicited to donate to a new University Fund for Graduate Student Aid, Summers said. And, for the first time, formal incentives will be created to encourage these donors to support priorities at the University’s smaller and less financially flush schools.

The changes were hinted at in a speech Summers delivered to alums at a banquet before the Harvard-Yale Game and will be publicized in a letter to donors some time this week.

They come as an alteration to the “class credit policy”—obscure, but much debated rules that govern what donations will count toward a reunion class’ fundraising total.

According to University officials, the tool of class credit is used to harness donors’ competitive impulses while directing their attention to top fundraising priorities.

Reunion classes at the College, Law and Business schools are encouraged to out-fundraise fellow classes and break donation records set in previous years.

But up until now, only donations targeting a school-specific list of “Dean’s priorities” were given credit.

Now credit will be used to encourage a relatively wider set of priorities.

“All gifts for financial aid University-wide will receive credit,” Summers said.

In addition, gifts of more than $250,000 for professorships and academic priorities at the Schools of Design, Divinity, Education, Government and Public Health will receive credit, Summers said.

The priorities will be determined by the deans of those schools in consultation with the president and provost.

The result will be that for the first time, an alum of the College will receive credit for donations to Harvard’s other schools.

According to the text of the policy, one goal of the change is to “raise funds for the Harvard schools whose missions are public-service oriented and/or whose graduates are predominantly in fields that do not enable them to adequately support their schools with gifts.”

Credit will also be used to raise money to fund inter-school collaborations and will be given for donations of more than $250,000 to the president and provost’s University Academic Innovation Fund.

The policy states that the president, in collaboration with the deans, may change the list of credit-gaining donations as priorities are further defined.