Gift Participation Falls Short of Goal

Eliot House was able to battle back from Mather advances and win the award for highest participation for Senior Class Gift donations.

“Mather came back and passed us, but we were able to pass them back,” said Christina M. Shelby ’04, who is one of the Eliot House Senior Class Gift co-chairs.

The gift is an annual donation made to the University by the departing senior class.

For the past two months, senior House representatives have solicited money from their respective House classmates, bringing over $33,000 into the fund.

Senior gift donations will be applied either to financial aid or to an unrestricted fund managed by Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71. The donors choose from these two options. Christopher D. Shutzer ’04, co-chair of the senior gift fund, said that in the past, the unrestricted fund has been used to fund new computers for the language resource center, house gyms, wireless internet and study abroad programs.

Each week, the Harvard College Fund development office calculated total participation for each House. Those Houses with the greatest participation increases were each awarded a small prize.

“We had a great group of House agents,” Shelby said. “We weren’t surprised that we won. We were a little nervous at the end, but we knew the entire time where we stood, and that we had a pretty good chance the last week.”

Eliot House received $300 after finishing the competition in first place with an 85 percent participation rate. Second-place Mather House, which finished two percentage points behind Eliot, received $200 towards House funds. Dunster house finished third with 80 percent participation.

Cabot House received $200 for the most improved House on campus, placing seventh with a 66 percent participation rate. Shutzer said this represented a 20 percent increase from last year in participation by Cabot residents.

The bottom finishers were Winthrop House, with 54 percent participation rate, and Lowell House, with 48 percent participation.

Shelby said the Houses’ differing success came down to the gift fund volunteers’ aggressiveness.

The key, she said, was to “be really active, get publicity, and get in touch with as many people in person as possible.”

Despite the competition, the percentage of seniors donating a gift of $10 or more to the class fund at the conclusion of the House competition dropped by 5 percent from last year’s rate, according to an e-mail by Director of Undergraduate Programs at the Harvard College Fund Kathleen Murray.

Last year’s participation rate of over 70 percent at the end of the competition was a record high. More money has been contributed to the fund this year, though, Shutzer said.

Although participation has not reached last year’s record-setting levels, Shutzer is still optimistic about final participation figures.

“This is an ongoing process and we still have 74 percent in our sights,” Shutzer said. “I’ve dubbed the ‘74 percent for ’04’ slogan for our campaign, that is two percent more than last year.”

Shutzer said this year’s campaign has received 58 executive contributions—donations of $250 or more—while the Class of 2003 made only 54 executive contributions.

Shutzer said it is important to give back to the Harvard community through a lifetime of donations, beginning with the senior gift.

“We’re really excited about the progress that we’ve made,” Shutzer said. “Without the alumni, the University would not be what it is and we’re constantly looking to help improve it.”

Over 200 seniors worked for the gift fund.

“We have some really exceptional workers that took the class to heart,” Shutzer said.