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Harvard asks donors for record US$6.5 billion

BOSTON — Harvard, the richest university in the United States, said yesterday (Sept 22) it would seek to raise some US$6.5 billion (S$8.13 billion) in donations to fund new academic initiatives and bolster its financial aid program.

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, right, talks with David Rubenstein, left, co-chairman of Harvard's capital campaign, during the campaign launch at the  Sanders Theatre on campus at Harvard Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013, in Cambridge, Mass. Photo: AP

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, right, talks with David Rubenstein, left, co-chairman of Harvard's capital campaign, during the campaign launch at the Sanders Theatre on campus at Harvard Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013, in Cambridge, Mass. Photo: AP

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BOSTON — Harvard, the richest university in the United States, said yesterday (Sept 22) it would seek to raise some US$6.5 billion (S$8.13 billion) in donations to fund new academic initiatives and bolster its financial aid program.

The fundraising drive by the Cambridge, Massachusetts, institution is believed to be the most ambitious ever undertaken by a university, ahead of one concluded last year by Stanford University in California that raised US$6.2 billion.

Harvard unveiled its campaign at an event featuring Bill Gates, who spent three years at the school in the 1970s before dropping out to co-found Microsoft Corp.

Mr Gates, who was ranked by Forbes magazine this year as the world’s second-richest person behind Mexico’s Carlos Slim, joked about his decision to leave the university during a talk before alumni and donors.

“You never say that you are ‘dropping out’ of Harvard. I ‘went on leave’ from Harvard,” he said. “If things hadn’t worked out for my company, Microsoft, I could have come back.”

The university has already raised US$2.8 billion from more than 90,000 donors during the pre-launch phase of the campaign, its first major fundraising drive in more than a decade, it said in a press release.

Harvard’s investment portfolio is worth about US$30.7 billion, roughly the size of the annual gross domestic product of the Baltic nation of Latvia.

That endowment shrank 0.05 per cent in the fiscal year ended in 2012, after double-digit gains the previous year, according to the most recent figures from the university.

“The endowment is meant to last forever. ... It enables our faculty to do groundbreaking research and supports financial aid for our students,” Vice President for Alumni Affairs & Development Tamara Rogers said in a statement. “In order to undertake new activities, we are going to have to raise new funds.”

Nearly half of the money raised in the new campaign will support teaching and research, while a quarter will go for financial aid and related programs. The rest will go toward capital improvements and a flexible fund, according to Harvard, recently ranked America’s No 2 university behind Princeton by US News & World Report.

Four years ago, Harvard was forced to suspend its campus expansion and put the construction of a US$1 billion science complex on hold after its endowment lost 27.3 per cent during the financial crisis.

The science building was slated to be the cornerstone of an ambitious 50-year expansion plan designed to increase the campus size by 50 per cent. REUTERS

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