“The quiet phase allows time to work with potential donors, see how they react to what we’re trying to do in the campaign,” Rogers said in an interview in mid-April. “If we get very affirmative reactions, and we’re able to raise money in this quiet phase up front, then it gives you a sense of how appealing the campaign is going to be.”

This shopping period can be one of the campaign’s most difficult aspects, according to regional center directors, but also one of its most important. With hundreds of ideas and deep-pocketed donors, trying to pair one with the other is a high-stakes game that ultimately helps campaign leaders outline broader themes and initiatives.

“You never want to raise money for things you don’t want to do,” Kirby said. More problematic can be naming priorities that donors will not support. Ideally such priorities are tweaked or eliminated during the vetting process, Gordon said.

Still, the vision developed through the vetting process is not set in stone.

As the campaign unfolds in real time, requests and expectations—particularly for smaller initiatives—can fluctuate a great deal. Rogers said that the current campaign will try to build in “unrestricted” funds to deal with that fluctuation. Those funds will not be tied to a specific initiative, allowing administrators the freedom to pursue new ideas not already articulated in the campaign.

“They’ve made a very good case for unrestricted giving,” Rogers said. “So that if you think of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Dean Smith has flexibility to try new things and to undertake initiatives or to fill in financial aid, for instance.”

While the planning process encourages campaign leaders to think ambitiously, it also gives departments and centers an opportunity to reframe their academic needs in terms of the bigger picture, Kirby explained.

“What are the needs of Harvard going ahead in the next 30 years?” he said. “Some of them are obvious—if you have a dorm falling apart and you need house renovations, then it’s an obvious thing to do. But what will be the next revolution of the life sciences? How do we have the capacity to invest in that?”

—Nikita Kansra, Sabrina A. Mohamed, and Samuel Y. Weinstock contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Nicholas P. Fandos can be reached at nicholasfandos@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @npfandos.