“We have big aspirations for its growth and its establishment as a school,” Faust said, adding that SEAS has a “special status.”

A difference in goals is not the only distinction that mandates different campaign strategies between schools. As Faust pointed out in an interview in early March, different alumni have different financial resources.

"We have to tailor our goals to a certain degree for the schools to what they are likely to be able to raise as well as what their dreams and aspirations might be,” Faust said.

She said that school size, which affects the size of a school's alumni base, could be a determining factor in the priorities that a school chooses for its campaign.

“Some of the smaller schools will have smaller goals,” she said. “They have fewer alums and often, alums who have not been as financially remunerated as others."

Like choosing campaign priorities, different schools’ processes of soliciting donations can overlap or even conflict. Donors may carry degrees from multiple schools at Harvard, or they may wish to contribute funds to a school that they did not attend.

Rogers emphasized the importance of coordinating the outreach of various schools to avoid duplicate efforts on the part of different offices and to direct donors towards projects where their contributions would be most useful.

“Basically we want to be as respectful as possible of our alumni so that they don’t feel as if people are coming to them from every direction without coordination,” Rogers said in December. “And so we realize it’s in our interest to coordinate.”

John A. Kaneb ’56, a donor who also serves on Harvard Medical School’s Board of Fellows, said that fundraising for a large University always comes with the question of which schools are allowed access to which donors—in other words, a centrally-coordinated effort versus what Kaneb described as more of a “free-market approach.”

“It can be quite competitive,” Kaneb said of different schools’ desire to reach the same donors. “Some would say chaotic.”

He said that the University’s central development office is working to manage potential conflict or overlap between different schools’ fundraising efforts.

“I would hope that they will do it with a light hand rather than a heavy hand,” Kaneb said. “I would hope it would not be over-managed.“

Rogers corroborated Kaneb’s sentiment, explaining that there are no written rules that dictate which donors schools may or may not contact for donations. Instead, collaboration is key.

—Staff writer Nikita Kansra can be reached at nkansra01@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @NikitaKansra.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @syweinstock.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: May 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the order in which University President Drew G. Faust made two statements about Harvard's strategy for its upcoming capital campaign. In fact, she spoke about tailoring goals to the unique circumstances of each of the University's schools before commenting on smaller schools specifically.