Stalking the Big Gift

Harvard, it now appears, may have a hand in administering a multimillion-dollar bequest from the late playwright Tennessee Williams. But dealing in seven-figure donations is a familiar practice for the administrators running the University's on-going $350 million fund-drive.

Seventy-five percent of the drive is expected to come from under 1 percent of its donors, say leaders of the Harvard Campaign, which has $250 million already in the till with nearly two years to go. In fact, officials say, reaching the $350 million goal will involve a total of at least 50 gifts of $1 million or more.

Finding 50 benefactors willing to part with a million dollars is no easy task.

The five-year Campaign represents the culmination of a decade of planning meetings--sessions at which alumni have rated each other's "giving potential"--as well as hundreds of telethons, dinners and publications advertising Harvard's capital needs. After prospective donors are identified, agents must convince them of the University's need and then solicit them for the actual gift.

In a $350 million program, the bureaucratic and overhead expenses can become staggering in themselves. Harvard's solution to these logistical problems has been to draw potential donors into the administrative processes as much as possible. Like so much of the University's administration, the Harvard Campaign is a paragon of successful decentralization. And at each stage of the process, the alumni with the largest giving potential--the top 1 percent who would donate 75 of the funds--have been involved intimately.

Blueprints for the Campaign first appeared in the mid-1970's, some five years before the 1979 kickoff. By that time, the Administration had realized the bite inflation had taken out of the University's endowment. Knowing a fund drive was in the not-too-distant future. University officials from President Bok on down began consulting prominent alumni for advice on the size, length, and nature of the Campaign--the same alumni who would be crucial to the program's success.

"They [the leading alumni] came into the planning very early," says Vice President for Alumni and Development Fred L. Glimp '50. The University turned first to those with long records of supporting Harvard--members of the Board of Overseers, alumni with consistently large giving records, and class fundraising officers. "You're talking about the alumni who have been most closely involved with the University," explains Glimp.

The start of the Campaign in 1979 was, for those core alumni, the culmination of several years of organization. The original $250 million goal was anything but arbitrary: rather, it emerged as the product of dozens of meetings where alumni evaluated the loyalty and resources of their classmates, considering past giving records and self-supplied biographical information.

Thomas D. Cabot '19 was one of those involved in these early stages. Calling himself "one of the originators of the Campaign," Cabot traces his participation all the way back to the early 1970's when President Bok created an advisory panel of former Overseers (Cabot served two terms on Harvard's governing board). "It was informal and gave advice on financial affairs," Cabot says of that preliminary panel. "You don't think Bok could do it all himself, do you?"

By consulting Cabot and a handful of others in the original planning, the University implanted nothing less than an emotional stake in the Campaign among those who would provide its main support. Implicit in requesting these alumni to draw up their initial reports was an appeal to them to be generous as well. "They know that's part of the understanding," says Glimp.

Cabot is an example of an alumnus who serves the campaign both administratively and financially. "He gives willingly to make the institution stronger....his involvement in the total picture of the University has been phenomenal," says a development officer. Today Cabot is on the Campaign's Executive Committee, in the company of others with similar records. These include Albert H. Gordon '23, namesake of the Indoor Track and Tennis Center, and John L. Loeb '24, who last year gave $8.5 million to endow 10 junior faculty chairs.

After the start of the Campaign in 1979. Harvard moved to broaden the ranks of these core alumni--those most likely to make large donations. Through its series of rating sessions, the University isolated 1900 alumni as prospects for donations over $100,000 and estimated receiving gifts of that size from at least 334 of them.

As part of the Campaign's decentralized structure, the development office separated responsibility for different sizes of gifts among three committees. The Major Gifts Committee focuses on the big money, having concentrated its efforts during the Campaign's "Leadership Phase," which ended in 1982.

Not surpisingly, the members of the Major Gifts Committee were drawn from those who had already made major gifts. As large donations came in during the first years, Harvard would ask contributors to join the committee. "In the early phases of the drive, we would keep adding people to the Major Gifts Committee as they made gifts of $100,000 or more," Glimp explains. From an initial size of about 100, the body has grown to about 180 today, he adds.

Service on the Major Gifts Committee involves soliciting large gifts from other alumni and thus represents the key to fulfilling the Campaign's top-heavy budgeting. Thomas Cabot, who also serves as the 1919 class chairman, has been actively involved in this effort. He recounts trips to California, Buffalo, and New York City for face-to-face meetings, which he says are vital to snaring the truly large gift.

Development officer Geoffrey H. Movius '62 describes the strategy as "arranging for one person to ask another" to support the Campaign. Harvard's role is to "set up the context" for these meetings to take place, he explains.

With scores of alumni having made time commitments similar to Cabot's. Harvard has a small army of fundraisers most of whom have donated large sums themselves--pushing the Campaign closer to $350 million. Although most belong to one of the Campaign's committees, they still take marching orders--names and itineraries--from Cambridge.

Cabot's contact in the development office is Rev. John W. Rick II, who supervises the face-to-face, large-gift fundraising of a number of alumni. "He's the jockey. I'm the horse. He has me jump and run around" is how Cabot characterizes his work with Rick.

Rick describes the role of Cabot and others as "reiterating the need" of the University in person. "Before he visits someone, he knows how much he can ask for." Rick continues, as Cabot and other fundraisers are supplied by Cambridge with the evaluation data on each prospect.

"It's much more effective if an alumnus is asking another alumnus for what may seem to be a staggering commitment," adds Glimp.

By personalizing the Campaign in this way. Harvard has lent a sense of urgency and intensity to the drive. Face-to-face contacts have proved especially fruitful, says Glimp, adding. "It's amazing how many alumni were genuinely pleased someone had gotten in touch with them."

Officials believe these tactics have emphasized Harvard's needs so strongly that many alumni have reached deeply into their pockets for "stretch gifts" that far exceed their past trend of giving to Harvard. According to Glimp, the average donor to the Campaign has pledged 110 times the level of his normal annual gift in the past.

"What you're always having to do is make a strong case of why you need the money," Glimp says. Harvard's approach of involving as many important alumni in the process as possible has yielded truly impressive results, which Glimp characterizes as "the alumnus's answer to President Bok...that 'I'm grateful you're working as hard as you are to keep my college strong.'"