“If [a donor’s] real passion is education or religion, we’d like to capture that for Harvard rather than have them give a minimal amount to the Business School and nothing more to Harvard at all,” Faust said.
In fact, integration with other parts of Harvard is one of the five priorities of the Business School’s $1 billion campaign.
Robert S. Kaplan, professor and the school’s senior associate dean for external relations, said that potential donors are presented with an overview of initiatives going on at the Business School as well as schools across the University—a technique that has been popular with donors.
“Our participation rate continues to climb because we can offer our alumni philanthropic options that are broader than in the past,” Kaplan said.
Many alumni agree that propping up schools with more limited resources and smaller donor bases can, ultimately, fulfill the One Harvard mission.
“The hope and the opportunity is that the resources you give back benefit any Harvard community member, whether they attend the school you graduated from or a different one,” Peter A. Boyce II ’13 said.
A CONFEDERATION OF CAMPAIGNS
Still, amid unprecedented levels of support of the One Harvard mission, schools have conducted discrete campaigns with priorities and fundraising structures tailored to their needs, a fact that some view as an institutional reality.
The individual school campaigns are “very real” with “their own volunteer structures, leaders, and needs,” Rogers said. In addition to University-wide initiatives and events, each school promotes its own set of priorities and celebratory events.
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Some University supporters say that a truly cohesive campaign is impossible given the varying missions and histories of each school.
David L. Yermack ’85, who is also an alumnus of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Law School and the Business School, identified donor allegiance to particular schools as an obstacle to a unified effort.
“[A completely centralized campaign] would be a radical change in approach from what they’ve been doing for well over a hundred years,” he said. “I’m not sure the message is really going to resonate with alumni...whose identity is really completely connected only to [their] school.”
According to Kaplan, “the power of Harvard” emerges through the integration of schools, even though the specialized priorities and objectives of the schools still necessitate separate campaigns.
Rogers characterized the lack of complete cohesion as a desirable and necessary quality.
“It’s a confederation of school campaigns and also it’s a University campaign. There’s a logic to that. There are genuine, legitimate needs in each school,” Rogers said. “And yet there’s so much more you can imagine if you think of the place whole. It’s hard to imagine only doing one or doing another.”
—Staff writer Amna H. Hashmi can be reached at amnahashmi@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @amna_hashmi.
—Staff writer Indrani G. Das. can be reached at indrani.das@thecrimson.com. Follow her on twitter @IndraniGDas.