Harvard has raised $900 million since the public launch of its capital campaign last September, boosting the fundraising drive’s ongoing total to $3.7 billion, more than half of its goal, University President Drew G. Faust said on Tuesday.

The $900 million raised in just six months exceeds the total amount collected during the last complete fiscal year, when the University raised a record $792 million. When the University publicly launched The Harvard Campaign, it announced it had already raised $2.8 billion in a multiyear quiet phase.

“I’m thrilled. This shows tremendous momentum,” Faust said in an interview in her Massachusetts Hall office Tuesday afternoon. She cautioned, though, that people should not expect the campaign to continue to progress so rapidly.

“I think we should all keep in mind that campaigns tend to have slow times, fast times, and I think the launch was something people had waited for,” she said. “We hadn’t been in a campaign for many years, so I think we got a lot of momentum at the start.”

Since the campaign launched, the University has received a series of high-profile gifts, including $10 million given to the Graduate School of Design by John K. F. Irving  ’83 and Anne I. Oxley in December; $90 million to the Medical School by Ludwig Cancer Research and $10 million to the Law School from Sumner M. Redstone ’44 in January; and the largest gift in Harvard College history, Kenneth L. Griffin ’89’s $150 million to support financial aid, a professorship at the Business School, and other unspecified campaign goals.

Together, these large gifts total $260 million, more than a quarter of the fundraising garnered since the Harvard Campaign launch. The University has not specified where the majority of the remaining $640 million comes from.

"While we're in the early stages of the Campaign, we continue to enjoy the philanthropic and volunteer support of alumni and friends around the world,” Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Tamara E. Rogers '74 said in a statement. “All campaigns have inevitable peaks and valleys, but we are feeling very positive about the reaction to date."