Donor Conference Meets at Harvard

They descended on Cambridge in droves this weekend to see current undergraduates, hear lectures from faculty, and, of course, be wined and dined.

No, not prefrosh. Millionaires.

Dozens of wealthy donors came to town for the annual symposium of the Committee on University Resources (COUR), a little-known body that has but one requirement for membership: donate $1 million or more to Harvard.

The weekend’s events kicked off with a 214-person dinner at the Charles Hotel on Friday night that included Harvard’s highest administrators and development officers, according to a seating chart obtained by The Crimson.

Though programs for the weekend dedicated the symposium to “Celebrating Students,” University President Drew G. Faust highlighted something else during her welcoming remarks, according to attendees.

“The Faust address was a celebratory address remarking on [David] Rockefeller and his $100 million donation to the University,” said Lam N. Ho, a Harvard Law School student who attended the event and spoke at a panel Saturday. “That was basically the entirety of the speech that evening.”













Faust leans in to speak to David Rockefeller whose $100 million gift was the subject of her speech after the dinner Friday night.




David Rockefeller ’36 spoke after Faust about the motivations for his gift—the largest by an alumnus in Harvard’s history.

The donation, announced Friday morning to coincide with the COUR symposium, includes $70 million for international programs and $30 million for the arts.

The COUR dinner also hosted a reorganized University Development Office, designed to place greater emphasis on fundraising for cross-school priorities and lay the groundwork for a potential capital campaign.

All four members of the capital gifts team, which was created last month, dined with COUR members Friday, along with Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Tamara E. Rogers and two of her predecessors in that position.