Harvard College Fund Gets Record Donations

Donations to the Harvard College Fund will set a new record this school year. As of three days ago, the Fund has collected $3,676,450. The previous record was $3.5 million, set several years ago. Barely $3 million was collected last year.

Chairman Albert H. Gordon '23 told the Fund's annual meeting yesterday that he expects the Fund to have $3.9 million by the end of the month and that "there's a chance to break $4 million." This year's total represents gifts from 31.6 per cent of living alumni compared to 30.1 per cent last year.

Gordon credited this "stupendous record" to the College Fund staff. "In the past couple of years, during theperiod of lunacy-to use the words of Kelman-the staff here at the Fund never lost its cool," Gordon said, referring to Steven J. Kelman '70, a socialist and author of a book on Harvard politics which was well received in some quarters.

"While some people were flying around in the sky with their liberal ideas looking for Eldorado," he continued, "the staff was always down on the ground and couldn't concern itself with what was going on."

Gordon attributed this good sense on the part of the Fund staff to their Harvard education. "When you've had a Harvard education," he said, "you realize that things change but-as the French say-the more they change, the more they stay the same."

Another factor in the success of the Fund during the past year, according to Fund director Schuyler Hollingsworth '40, was new fund-raising techniques such as the establishment of a "Presidential Associates" program. Under this scheme, as described by Gordon, any alumnus who gives $5000 or more during a non-reunion year becomes a "Presidential Associate"-which entitles him to a free dinner with the President of Harvard and football tickets on the fifty-yard line.

There were 60 Presidential Associates this past year, and the program was so successful that Fund officials plan to inaugurate for next year a title of "Dean's Associate" for those who give between $1000 and $5000. One representative of the Class of 1926 told the appreciative meeting that Dean Dunlop is already a very effective fund-raiser.

"We had one reluctant fellow," the class agent reported, "so we brought Dunlop down to New York to eat a meal with him Dunlop worked on him under the table and produced a sizeable contribution."