Administrators at each of Harvard’s 12 schools are busy preparing budget proposals due in mid-March.

In doing so, they are contending with economic conditions they haven’t seen in nearly a decade: a bearish stock-market, declines in fundraising and an 11-month recession.

The economic slowdown is forcing Harvard’s finance officers to take a hard look at existing programs and, in many cases, scale back their future plans.

University Vice President for Finance Elizabeth C. “Beppie” Huidekoper says the University is “holding off on major commitments and making trade-offs” in the midst of the recession.

While all of the schools are “scaling back,” larger schools—especially the Harvard Business School (HBS) and the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) have been hit hardest.

Fundraising Difficulties

The problem for most schools begins with the money coming in—there’s simply less of it around.

Annual gifts to HBS are down 10 percent since September, according to Chief Financial Officer Donella M. Rapier. The drop is not huge, but nevertheless it is reason for concern, Rapier says.

Indeed, many schools are facing fundraising problems.

“It’s a more challenging philanthropic environment than it was before,” says KSG Executive Dean J. Bonnie Newman. Although KSG has not yet seen a decrease in monetary donations to the school, officials are working harder to keep the money flowing.

Downtown at the Medical School, the recession has limited the school’s fundraising success, according to Associate Dean for Finance Cynthia L. Walker.

“Midway through the fiscal year, our fundraising is down substationally,” she says.

In some ways, though, the Medical School is lucky—it relies on grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, which has continued to thrive during the recession.

But for all schools, there is one constant: less money coming in means less money can go out.

Cutting Back