The money will be needed regardless of whether the school stays in Cambridge or moves to Allston, Nichols said.
Even if a decision on the Law School’s future location would make fundraising for facilities less difficult, the school cannot afford to wait for the University to make up its mind, Nichols said.
“We can’t put off the $100 million because it’s so tied to the other three-quarters of the goal,” Nichols said. “We already have some significant support for physical facilities because of their integration into our academic plans.”
But the school is confident that uncertainty over Allston will not deter potential donors.
“We’re very pleasantly surprised about early supporters who say they don’t really care about where we put the facilities,” Nichols said.
And Nichols said he was optimistic that, as a whole, such a large campaign will be feasible. The development office has already received more commitments and payments than was expected, he said.
Typically, fundraisers try to raise between one-quarter and one-third of their overall campaign goals before “going public.” Nichols said that HLS would be aiming to raise an even higher percentage, and already has several multi-million dollar contributions lined up.
HLS’ previous campaign came several years before the kick-off of the University-wide Capital Campaign in which planners coordinated simultaneous fundraising across all of the University’s schools. While the tail-end of HLS’ campaign counted toward the University campaign’s $2.6 billion final tally, the Law School’s campaign was effectively separate from that effort.
University Development Office spokesperson Andy K. Tiedemann explained that while the rest of the University is still in a rest phase, it is natural that the Law School should be looking to hold another campaign.
Tiedemann said the fact that HLS will again be working on its own does not mean that the schools have returned to the model of separate, loosely-coordinated campaigns.
The schools now regularly coordinate their fundraising activities like they did during the University-wide campaign, Tiedemann said.
And with a new president with new priorities, details of the University-wide planning process have yet to be worked out.
“We’re not aware yet of what any timetable is for University-wide fundraising,” Nichols said, “but it’s hard to imagine its not coming soon.”
In order to harness the momentum of HLS’ recently completed academic plans, the school will have to go it alone again, Nichols said.
And Nichols speculated that HLS would again be the vanguard of the next wave of campaigns, as it appears that the Business School, Medical School and others might be looking to hit the trail in pursuit of new contributions.
—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.