Reunion Gifts Drive Week Of Partying

Inside Harvard University, there is a corporation within a corporation--nameless yet not faceless, a big spender yet exceedingly profitable.

That corporation, though not an independent legal entity, is staffed by a few full-time employees in places like the Yard's Wadsworth House, the Class Report Office on Winthrop Street and Radcliffe's Fay House. These are people who work long hours year-round for the good of one glorious week in early June.

The primary job for these employees is important if small: organize reunions each year for roughly 5,000 Harvard graduates, family members and significant others.

The reunion organizers--longtime Harvard employees like Marion Briefer, Diane Jellis, Anne McCoubrey and Rosemary Resnik--say they have only one goal: putting on a great party.

But the University which pays their salaries and heavily subsidizes three "major" reunions--the 25th, the 35th and the 50th--has different motives. For Harvard, the reunions are an investment with an annual profitability that surpasses anything that can be made on Wall Street.

Harvard's subsidy to the 25th reunion, according to Briefer, is about $1 million a year. The gift donated this year by the Harvard class of 1968 will approach $6 million, according to reunion gift co-chair David H. "Zack" Taylor '68.

The way this money is raised is symbolic of how Harvard runs its reunions. Personal relationships and longstanding agreements dictate everything about the reunions from the site of outings to who sets up the chairs.

In the case of fundraising, reunion gift chairs for each class rely heavily on their personal knowledge and acquaintances to raise a donation for Harvard. These chairs study their friends' and classmates' finances and giving histories in order to identify the deepest pockets. They then find the friends of those deep pockets, and have those friends do the soliciting. It's a system that works.

Richard B. Boardman, executive director of the Harvard College Fund, says the fund will receive upwards of $42.5 million in donations this year.

Much of the donated money is tied to the reunions, either as part of a gift offered by a reunion class or as a result of the good feeling engendered by the annual get-togethers. And that good feeling flows so freely that Boardman expects more than half of all alumni to contribute to Harvard this year.

Professionals like Briefer and Jellis spend the money and work out the details of the party, but the reunions' "profits" are made by alumni themselves, who volunteer to hold dinners, make phone calls and stroke egos to raise big bucks for the College.

The corporation within a corporation is a serious business.

The Class of 1958 is famous for many things, among them Eric Segal's novel, The Class, which, its author insists, is purely fictional.

The novelist's protagonist, however, is a fundraiser for the class's Harvard reunion. That is somehow fitting in a class that is remarkably good at raising money.

Fundraisers use a formula to construct a multimillion dollar gift like the 35th reunion donation the whole class will make to the Harvard College Fund this year. First, the reunion gift chairs actively solicit two or three gifts of $1 million or more, which often requires cross-country travel to stroke and cajole prospective donors. With those gifts in hand, fundraisers nationwide go after donations in the $10,000 to $100,000 range. Other fundraisers, whose focus is participation, launch phone drives to pick up minor contributors.

The Class of '58 has this drill down pat. It figures to bring in a gift of between 5.25 and 5.5 million dollars, with 80 percent of the class participating. The class of '57, in contrast, raised about $4 million for its 35th reunion gift, with a roughly 70 percent participation rate.

"The key to the dollars is one's ability to get one or two or three highly significant gifts," says Marshall L. Berkman '58, reunion gift co-chair. "There's a tendency to think only of seven-figure gifts. But there is also an important set of gifts there between $10,000 and $100,000."

Like the building of the floats for Southern California's Tournament of Roses parade, alumni reunions begin even before the reunion week the previous year. Major reunion gift committees usually get organized even earlier, and some begin meeting and planning two years in advance of the reunions.

Berkman and the other co-chair, Robert C. Waggoner '58, say the class does better than others because it launches recruiting efforts from bases all around the country, instead of relying on an East Coast center like New York or Boston. The class has regional co-chairs charged with spearheading efforts in cities like Chicago and San Francisco.

"If someone in Milwaukee gets a call from Cambridge or Boston or New York, it might seem more remote," says H. George Mann '58, the regional gift chair for Chicago. "But if he gets a call from someone from the Midwest, psychologically, he feels less remote."

All reunion classes like to emphasize a personal approach to soliciting gifts. Many gift chairs say they try to match up prospective donors with solicitors who may be friends. And face-to-face meetings are practically protocol for any gift larger than $10,000.

"In many cases, it's not a call. It's a personal meeting," says Taylor. "Most people don't have to be heavily solicited. They see this as a time to repay Harvard for the rewards they got out of Harvard."

Soliciting friends can be awkward, and most recommend a straightforward approach in a casual setting.

"You do it by saying that you hope the College is as important to them as it is to you," says Robert S. November '58, regional gift chair for New York.

Small givers don't quite get the same treatment. They are solicited largely through phone drives and by people they never knew. The Class of 1958 has four "participation" chairs assigned to enhance participation in the class gift, but they, for the most part, run phone-a-thons out of Boston and New York.

No matter what their resources, each class asks each classmate to "stretch" in making contributions.

"We ask them to make a contribution that seems like a stretch now but may not necessarily be a stretch," says Taylor. "Obviously, someone who is a schoolteacher in the Midwest may not have the resources as someone working on Wall Street. But we have similar expectations based on participation."

Radcliffe classes often convince as many as 70 percent of their classmates to contribute, but the size of the gifts is substantially smaller. While Taylor says the Harvard Class of '68 is likely to approach $6 million, Ferrell P. McClean '68 and Susan S. Wallach '68, reunion gift co-chairs for the Radcliffe class, say they were content to exceed their goal of $200,000 in gifts.

"Between the two of us, we went through the class list and looked at their history of giving," says McClean. "We took our whole class and sent it off to everyone on the committee, to see who knows who. The best personal information was gleaned that way."

Strict rules regulate the organization of reunions and fundraising between Harvard and Radcliffe. For classes 1963 through 1975, Harvard may only solicit male graduates and Radcliffe can only raise funds from female graduates.

Beginning with the class of 1976, raising money is a free-for-all.

"People don't want to say it's a competition, but of course it is," says Rosemary Resnik, a Radcliffe associate for classes and reunions. "We've both done much better with these recent classes because [Harvard] can solicit how they want and we can solicit how we want."

Despite the subsidies for major reunions, alumni pay most of the costs. For a family attending the entire 25th reunion and living in Harvard housing this year, the cost is $880.

"I remember during my 25th thinking that the cost of my reunion and flight from England [where I was living] amounted to my tuition during my first year at Harvard," says Jean Leventhal '63, who is now chair of her 30th reunion.

Because the cost is prohibitive for some, many reunions offer financial aid to help classmates who need it to make the trip.

"We have made it clear on a confidential basis, anyone can write to a person in the alumni office and we'll draw the money from the class treasury without knowing who it is," says Robert H. Hoskins '43, reunion committee secretary.

With so many arrangements to be made in such a short time, budgeting for reunions can be frantic, too. Diane Jellis, who organizes the non-major reunions, says she often has to pay costs and later bill the classes to recover the money.

"Everything I do I have to bill back out, I have to recover," says Jellis. "My budget is usually a mess. I'm already 107 percent over budget."

Still, the non-major reunions tend to be more relaxed, less structured events with fewer costs and activities. Victor C. Harnish '28, reunion chair for the 65th, says his class will have some activities tomorrow that cost about $3,000. Contributions will help cover expenses, he says.

The non-majors take more organization on the part of individual class members, as University officials have fewer resources to devote to making their arrangements. But unlike the budget-balancing major reunions, many non-majors have to make a small profit. That is by design, their organizers say, because each class needs money in its treasury to cover startup costs for the next reunion, which is only five years away.

"On the 45th reunion, we made a profit on the class report, but we lost money on the reunion," says Hoskins. "We made a little money overall."

The class reports are more than cash cows. Ann E. McCoubrey, class report editor, and other class report officials say they're interested most of all in promoting interest in Harvard. If that, in turn, promotes donations, so be it.

"Don't put it down to just money," says Mary G. Lynch, a staff assistant in the office. "It's also a good feeling and good fellowship--just keeping in touch."

But the reports do have a financial role. The class report for the majors are partly subsidized by Harvard, which also asks alumni to contribute for the books. The cost of the 25th report, the largest book with the most pictures, is roughly $110,000.

Budget cuts have hit the Class Report Office, and McCoubrey says, "It's difficult to operate in our crunch time with the staff we have available."

There are other pressing concerns. McCoubrey says her office regularly consults with the general counsel's office when legal questions arise over what is printable. Yale, she notes, was sued earlier this year for something it published in a class report.

In addition, some pieces come in that need to be reworked or scrapped altogether.

"There are certain disasters, and I mean disasters," says Lynch. "There are certainly Harvard graduates who have gone over the edge and their writing sounds deranged."

The reunions are such a serious business that even the student help is carefully screened. Keith R. Sarkisian, a coordinator for the University's child care effort, says for every student hired as a day camp counselor for the reunions, three are rejected.

Jellis says she subjects students who apply for jobs in the Wadsworth House reunion office to an intensive application and interview process.

"I interview every single [student] candidate myself," says Jellis. "And then I pluck probably ten of the best."

Reunion week is also a moneymaker for several Harvard entities that provide services for the alumni.

The University's security department, for example, receives a larger-than-usual payment for the guards it dispatches to perform details at reunion events, according to sources. And Harvard Dining Services aims to make a little profit on the meals it serves.

"When we negotiate with reunions, we're not just trying to break even but also make a very small profit--a 3 percent margin," says Director of Dining Services Michael P. Berry. "We love billing the reunion people."

Berry says he begins planning in October for Commencement week, during which his employees serve 50,000 meals and prepare 15,000 box lunches. The meals are generally of the same quality as the festive meals served intermittently in the College's dining halls.

"Logistically, it may be impossible," Berry says.

But the logistics--and the corporation within the corporation--only seems to get more complicated. Graduate schools, long having noted the largess the College gains from its reunions, have stepped up or started class gift programs.

The Medical School, for example, launched a pilot reunion gift program in 1990. Officials call it a success, and the 120 members of the school's 50th reunion class donated $200,000 this year.

"I think we find the alumni more responsive in a reunion year," says Kate Hill, the Medical School's assistant director of annual giving. "So the development office tries to tap into that excitement."

The Reunions:

A Two-Part Look

Today

TomorrowCrimsonTie A. ChapmanMembers of the Class of 1943 walk toward a reunion event yesterday.

Harvard's subsidy to the 25th reunion, according to Briefer, is about $1 million a year. The gift donated this year by the Harvard class of 1968 will approach $6 million, according to reunion gift co-chair David H. "Zack" Taylor '68.

The way this money is raised is symbolic of how Harvard runs its reunions. Personal relationships and longstanding agreements dictate everything about the reunions from the site of outings to who sets up the chairs.

In the case of fundraising, reunion gift chairs for each class rely heavily on their personal knowledge and acquaintances to raise a donation for Harvard. These chairs study their friends' and classmates' finances and giving histories in order to identify the deepest pockets. They then find the friends of those deep pockets, and have those friends do the soliciting. It's a system that works.

Richard B. Boardman, executive director of the Harvard College Fund, says the fund will receive upwards of $42.5 million in donations this year.

Much of the donated money is tied to the reunions, either as part of a gift offered by a reunion class or as a result of the good feeling engendered by the annual get-togethers. And that good feeling flows so freely that Boardman expects more than half of all alumni to contribute to Harvard this year.

Professionals like Briefer and Jellis spend the money and work out the details of the party, but the reunions' "profits" are made by alumni themselves, who volunteer to hold dinners, make phone calls and stroke egos to raise big bucks for the College.

The corporation within a corporation is a serious business.

The Class of 1958 is famous for many things, among them Eric Segal's novel, The Class, which, its author insists, is purely fictional.

The novelist's protagonist, however, is a fundraiser for the class's Harvard reunion. That is somehow fitting in a class that is remarkably good at raising money.

Fundraisers use a formula to construct a multimillion dollar gift like the 35th reunion donation the whole class will make to the Harvard College Fund this year. First, the reunion gift chairs actively solicit two or three gifts of $1 million or more, which often requires cross-country travel to stroke and cajole prospective donors. With those gifts in hand, fundraisers nationwide go after donations in the $10,000 to $100,000 range. Other fundraisers, whose focus is participation, launch phone drives to pick up minor contributors.

The Class of '58 has this drill down pat. It figures to bring in a gift of between 5.25 and 5.5 million dollars, with 80 percent of the class participating. The class of '57, in contrast, raised about $4 million for its 35th reunion gift, with a roughly 70 percent participation rate.

"The key to the dollars is one's ability to get one or two or three highly significant gifts," says Marshall L. Berkman '58, reunion gift co-chair. "There's a tendency to think only of seven-figure gifts. But there is also an important set of gifts there between $10,000 and $100,000."

Like the building of the floats for Southern California's Tournament of Roses parade, alumni reunions begin even before the reunion week the previous year. Major reunion gift committees usually get organized even earlier, and some begin meeting and planning two years in advance of the reunions.

Berkman and the other co-chair, Robert C. Waggoner '58, say the class does better than others because it launches recruiting efforts from bases all around the country, instead of relying on an East Coast center like New York or Boston. The class has regional co-chairs charged with spearheading efforts in cities like Chicago and San Francisco.

"If someone in Milwaukee gets a call from Cambridge or Boston or New York, it might seem more remote," says H. George Mann '58, the regional gift chair for Chicago. "But if he gets a call from someone from the Midwest, psychologically, he feels less remote."

All reunion classes like to emphasize a personal approach to soliciting gifts. Many gift chairs say they try to match up prospective donors with solicitors who may be friends. And face-to-face meetings are practically protocol for any gift larger than $10,000.

"In many cases, it's not a call. It's a personal meeting," says Taylor. "Most people don't have to be heavily solicited. They see this as a time to repay Harvard for the rewards they got out of Harvard."

Soliciting friends can be awkward, and most recommend a straightforward approach in a casual setting.

"You do it by saying that you hope the College is as important to them as it is to you," says Robert S. November '58, regional gift chair for New York.

Small givers don't quite get the same treatment. They are solicited largely through phone drives and by people they never knew. The Class of 1958 has four "participation" chairs assigned to enhance participation in the class gift, but they, for the most part, run phone-a-thons out of Boston and New York.

No matter what their resources, each class asks each classmate to "stretch" in making contributions.

"We ask them to make a contribution that seems like a stretch now but may not necessarily be a stretch," says Taylor. "Obviously, someone who is a schoolteacher in the Midwest may not have the resources as someone working on Wall Street. But we have similar expectations based on participation."

Radcliffe classes often convince as many as 70 percent of their classmates to contribute, but the size of the gifts is substantially smaller. While Taylor says the Harvard Class of '68 is likely to approach $6 million, Ferrell P. McClean '68 and Susan S. Wallach '68, reunion gift co-chairs for the Radcliffe class, say they were content to exceed their goal of $200,000 in gifts.

"Between the two of us, we went through the class list and looked at their history of giving," says McClean. "We took our whole class and sent it off to everyone on the committee, to see who knows who. The best personal information was gleaned that way."

Strict rules regulate the organization of reunions and fundraising between Harvard and Radcliffe. For classes 1963 through 1975, Harvard may only solicit male graduates and Radcliffe can only raise funds from female graduates.

Beginning with the class of 1976, raising money is a free-for-all.

"People don't want to say it's a competition, but of course it is," says Rosemary Resnik, a Radcliffe associate for classes and reunions. "We've both done much better with these recent classes because [Harvard] can solicit how they want and we can solicit how we want."

Despite the subsidies for major reunions, alumni pay most of the costs. For a family attending the entire 25th reunion and living in Harvard housing this year, the cost is $880.

"I remember during my 25th thinking that the cost of my reunion and flight from England [where I was living] amounted to my tuition during my first year at Harvard," says Jean Leventhal '63, who is now chair of her 30th reunion.

Because the cost is prohibitive for some, many reunions offer financial aid to help classmates who need it to make the trip.

"We have made it clear on a confidential basis, anyone can write to a person in the alumni office and we'll draw the money from the class treasury without knowing who it is," says Robert H. Hoskins '43, reunion committee secretary.

With so many arrangements to be made in such a short time, budgeting for reunions can be frantic, too. Diane Jellis, who organizes the non-major reunions, says she often has to pay costs and later bill the classes to recover the money.

"Everything I do I have to bill back out, I have to recover," says Jellis. "My budget is usually a mess. I'm already 107 percent over budget."

Still, the non-major reunions tend to be more relaxed, less structured events with fewer costs and activities. Victor C. Harnish '28, reunion chair for the 65th, says his class will have some activities tomorrow that cost about $3,000. Contributions will help cover expenses, he says.

The non-majors take more organization on the part of individual class members, as University officials have fewer resources to devote to making their arrangements. But unlike the budget-balancing major reunions, many non-majors have to make a small profit. That is by design, their organizers say, because each class needs money in its treasury to cover startup costs for the next reunion, which is only five years away.

"On the 45th reunion, we made a profit on the class report, but we lost money on the reunion," says Hoskins. "We made a little money overall."

The class reports are more than cash cows. Ann E. McCoubrey, class report editor, and other class report officials say they're interested most of all in promoting interest in Harvard. If that, in turn, promotes donations, so be it.

"Don't put it down to just money," says Mary G. Lynch, a staff assistant in the office. "It's also a good feeling and good fellowship--just keeping in touch."

But the reports do have a financial role. The class report for the majors are partly subsidized by Harvard, which also asks alumni to contribute for the books. The cost of the 25th report, the largest book with the most pictures, is roughly $110,000.

Budget cuts have hit the Class Report Office, and McCoubrey says, "It's difficult to operate in our crunch time with the staff we have available."

There are other pressing concerns. McCoubrey says her office regularly consults with the general counsel's office when legal questions arise over what is printable. Yale, she notes, was sued earlier this year for something it published in a class report.

In addition, some pieces come in that need to be reworked or scrapped altogether.

"There are certain disasters, and I mean disasters," says Lynch. "There are certainly Harvard graduates who have gone over the edge and their writing sounds deranged."

The reunions are such a serious business that even the student help is carefully screened. Keith R. Sarkisian, a coordinator for the University's child care effort, says for every student hired as a day camp counselor for the reunions, three are rejected.

Jellis says she subjects students who apply for jobs in the Wadsworth House reunion office to an intensive application and interview process.

"I interview every single [student] candidate myself," says Jellis. "And then I pluck probably ten of the best."

Reunion week is also a moneymaker for several Harvard entities that provide services for the alumni.

The University's security department, for example, receives a larger-than-usual payment for the guards it dispatches to perform details at reunion events, according to sources. And Harvard Dining Services aims to make a little profit on the meals it serves.

"When we negotiate with reunions, we're not just trying to break even but also make a very small profit--a 3 percent margin," says Director of Dining Services Michael P. Berry. "We love billing the reunion people."

Berry says he begins planning in October for Commencement week, during which his employees serve 50,000 meals and prepare 15,000 box lunches. The meals are generally of the same quality as the festive meals served intermittently in the College's dining halls.

"Logistically, it may be impossible," Berry says.

But the logistics--and the corporation within the corporation--only seems to get more complicated. Graduate schools, long having noted the largess the College gains from its reunions, have stepped up or started class gift programs.

The Medical School, for example, launched a pilot reunion gift program in 1990. Officials call it a success, and the 120 members of the school's 50th reunion class donated $200,000 this year.

"I think we find the alumni more responsive in a reunion year," says Kate Hill, the Medical School's assistant director of annual giving. "So the development office tries to tap into that excitement."

The Reunions:

A Two-Part Look

Today

TomorrowCrimsonTie A. ChapmanMembers of the Class of 1943 walk toward a reunion event yesterday.