Harvard Alumni Donations Lag As Fund Drive Nears Conclusion

Fewer people are contributing to Harvard's annual funds this year than was the case a year ago, and total contributions are also down.

So far, the present series of fund drives among college and graduate school alumni are 11 per cent behind the comparable period last year in numbers contributing. The drives are 8.6 per cent behind in total gifts collected.

Fund directors, however, say that there is still time to catch up to last year's figures before the funds close in June. They attribute most of the lag in numbers of donors and in total donations to the declining stock market.

Schuyler Hollingsworth '40, Executive Director of the Harvard College Fund, predicts that "if the stock market doesn't fall out of bed anymore, we might do as well as last year." During the 1968-69 period, the College Fund set a record in total contributions, although the number of donors dropped from the previous year.

The annual funds-including the College Fund and five others from the graduate schools-cover about ten per cent of Harvard's cost each year. The rest is made up from the various capital drives, which are difficult to evaluate as a whole in terms of yearly increases.

Fund Must Go Up

"Harvard's expenditures go up ten per cent each year," Hollingsworth said yesterday, "and the fund has to keep pace or tuition will have to go up."

To stem the decrease in donors, the University is attempting to keep alumni better informed of events at the College than they have been in the past.

Starting next fall, the alumni will receive five issues of a revised and newsoriented Harvard Today per year. Recently Harvard began sending its University Gazette to each of the class agents to keep them in closer touch with campus events.

Although alumni response to last April's building occupation and police bust was often critical, fund directors feel the decreases are less due to dissatisfaction with Harvard than to basic confusion.

"They see their donations as votes of confidence, and they don't want to cast their votes unless they know what's going on," Hollingsworth said.