Fundraising: New Competition

When the University completed its last major fundraising effort more than four years ago, it had raised more campaign dollars than any other school.

Second in a three-part series on the status of Harvard's upcoming capital campaign.

Today, that $300 million-plus sounds like peanuts. In this decade, Harvard officials are again planning a fund drive--one whose target may near the $3 billion mark.

But university fundraisers say the 1990s have brought more than just higher goals: with changing times have come greater competition, as other private charities, from museums to foundations, now increasingly compete for donor dollars.

"There is an enormous amount of fundraising going on in the private sector--from universities to museums," said Thomas M. Reardon, Harvard's chief development officer. "Competition is more than [it was] in the past."

To complicate matters, Harvard fundraisers may have to face still more competition as campaign delays continue. Although University officials had initially planned to kick off the new drive sometime next fall, searches for a new president and a new Faculty dean have thrown a wrench into the process.

At the University of Pennsylvania, where a massive fund drive is already underway, one development officer said he, too, is concerned that other charities may pose a threat to campaign donations.

"Today, there are a lot more types of charities involved in this kind of campaigning," said Frederick C. Nahm, Penn's vice president for development, adding that recently large environmental groups have attempted national fund drives.

Harvard, despite its usual leadership in higher education financial circles, is not the first university to move into the billion-dollar market. Other large research universities--from Columbia to Stanford--have one by one announced 10-figure fundraising goals.

Yet these tandem drives do not for the most part create competition among schools, fundraisers say. Rather, they only move to egg each other on.

"The other campaigns just cause us to raise our sights," Penn's Nahm said. "The big growth is in alumni giving, and there are very few cases of jointly shared alumni."

Indeed, Reardon said there is relatively very little overlap between graduates, and each institution has its own"constituency" of donors.

Ernest E. Monrad '51, one of Harvard's chiefBoston fundraisers and donors, may be just theexample Reardon seeks.

"If Columbia came to ask me for money, I'd saythat's nice but I have other ties," said Monrad."That's why I have a '51 after my name, and whenthere's blue and crimson on the field, you knowwho I cheer for."

Tomorrow: Economic troubles and thecampaign.