Donations to the University totaled $590 million in the fiscal year ended June 30 the second highest sum in Harvard’s history, according to Donella M. Rapier, vice president for alumni affairs and development. The previous peak, $658 million in 2001, came at the end of the $2.6-billion University Campaign. (Unlike the higher figures published in Harvard’s annual financial report, the development-office figures discount capital gifts for life income funds to their present value.)
Rapier cited the strength of Harvard Business School’s capital campaign, which accounted for more than one-fifth of the gifts recorded. Harvard Law School’s campaign continues on track, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) had steady results. “The sciences have engendered a lot of interest,” she said, with $30 million raised for the stem-cell institute and 10 professorships funded in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which held a “chair challenge.” Donor interest in financial aid focused on the initiative for low-income undergraduates and public-service-oriented graduate schools (such as education, government, and public health).
The timing of a broad capital campaign has evidently been pushed back. Rapier cited incomplete academic planning in FAS, which is reworking the College curriculum; in “very complex” crosscutting science initiatives; and in the graduate schools with new deans (design, government) or interim leadership (education). As for putting a price tag on existing programs and new ambitions in Allston, she said, “The hardest part is the final decisions on what’s in and what’s not.”
