Hidden Under Harvard's Mattress: The Idiosyncrasies of the Endowment

In the early part of this century, a student named Murphy could get a scholarship to Harvard merely by looking in the newspaper, where the University used classified ads to advertise a scholarship available only to men with that surname.

And that newspaper might also have been a ticket to free education for those on the other side of the newsstand counter--some of whom took advantage of a scholarship only for Boston newsboys.

These scholarships were paid out of Harvard's endowment, and enormous institutional nest egg whose sources of income are still as varied as the purposes for which they are given.

Over three and a half centuries of capital campaigns, Harvard has been the proud owner of an English farm, a Chelsea swamp, half a house in Salem and an island off the South Shore.

Except for the island, all these have been sold--but money from these and other donations doesn't just pile up together under Harvard's mattress.

Much of the endowment is made up of restricted gifts, money sometimes tied to purposes like the Boston News-boy's Scholarship, which are as old as the College water pump in front of Stoughton Hall and nearly as useless.

Trying to access these funds for cur-rent use is often a headache for Harvard's financial braintrust, and one of the main tasks of Development Office staff is to prevent the possibility that current gifts may become outdated.

Golden Oldies

Most of Harvard's endowment is made up of money given in the last century, but there are a few gifts still earning interest from a time when New England measured worth in pounds sterling and acres of land.

Lady Molson's 1643 gift of 100 pounds is still accounted for, as it is the legacy of Harvard's first female benefactor. (Lady Molson's maiden name was Ann Radcliffe.)

A few decades later, Samuel Ward one-upped other donors of land who had given Harvard farms, a slice of swampland and "half a house," leaving the College an entire island off the Massachusetts coast near Hingham in 1680.

The island was leased out for 500 years in 1899--a lease which will eventually net Harvard a total of $16,000 in 2399--just in time for 850th anniversary celebrations.

This money will end up in a fund for use at the college's discretion, but many older gifts were legally tied to specific uses when they were given and have become obsolete over the centuries.

For instance, the interest from Benjamin Wadsworth's 1737 bequest of "110 pounds for some poor scholar (tho' to no dunce or a rake)" now applies to general scholarships, without its dunce stipulation.

The Murphy scholarship and the Boston Newsboy's Scholarships have met the same fate--interest from these gifts now fills coffers used for general scholar-ships.

Older endowed professorships which have become difficult to fill over the years include the Hollis Chair of Mathematick and Natural Philosophy and the Fisher Professorship of Natural History, charged with studying "animal, mineral and vegetable" in the 1700s.

These professorships and scholarships, even when outdated, are not always as easily changed as the Zalaznick chair of Holocaust Studies was last week.

After an abortive search for a scholar to fill that chair, Harvard successfully encouraged the endowing family to divert the money to a Medical School project for the time being.

University Attorney Frank J. Connors says when the gifts become outdated, Harvard must sometimes resort to legal recourse to rechannel the funds. It usually means a court appearance known as a Cy Pres hearing.

"In effect, Cy Pres means you can change the terms of the gift if they become impractical or illegal," Connors says. "But you can change it only so much as to make it practical or legal [still adhering] to the terms of the gift."

For example, money allotted for polio research was rerouted to other medical research in the early 1960s after a vaccine for polio was found.

An Ounce of Prevention

When today's donors have their own unique interests, the task of soliciting large donations sometimes means dissuading donors from less-than-useful gifts.

"Our fundraisers are pretty good at talking people out of strange things nowadays," says Paul W. Upson, assistant dean for finance and operations at the Law School.

"It's a very interesting dance to try and match the donor's dreams with the institution's dreams," says Radcliffe's Vice President for College Relations Bonnie Clendenning. "The institution's dreams are often severely constrained by tradition, legal issues and allocation of scarce resources, versus a donor's interests which are often very single-minded."

Andy K. Tiedemann, director of communications in Harvard's development office, says the University usually receives large gifts after extended consultation between the donor and Harvard officials--consultation that usually prevents the donor from sticking to an impractical idea.

"The general expectation is that donors will come to us with an original idea, and if the idea doesn't match the goals of the University, most donors will modify their original plan," Tiedemann says.

Officials say that on rare occasions, donors will not budge from a gift idea that Harvard simply cannot use. In such cases, the University must turn the gift down.

While officials could provide no recent examples of Harvard turning down an impractical gift, Yale University recently refused a gift of $20 million to endow a program in Western Civilization.

However, bequests are another story. Often the school will not learn of the gift until the donor has died, leaving little time for negotiation. One gift left to Radcliffe, for example, was a piece of jewelry that came with the stipulation that it must be worn by the president of Radcliffe.

According to Clendenning, the College was able to work with the donor's heirs to release the president from this duty.

Fortunately for Harvard, most high-profile donors tend toward generalized giving or donations made to fill an existing need at the University.

Sidney R. Knafel '52, whose donations will fund the construction of the Knafel Center near Coolidge Hall in the near future, says that his gifts were also tailored to Harvard's needs.

"If Neil [Rudenstine] had come to me and said we need this amount of funds [$20 million] for the library, for scholarships, or for Latin and Greek videotape projects, I would have had equal motivation [to donate]," Knafel says.

The Development Office also keeps major donors informed about the status of their gifts.

"Everything was done properly, and furthermore we get reports about each of the funds on the annual basis," says Carl H. Pforzheimer III '58.

A final modern trump card has evolved for development officers seeking to avoid the Newsboy scholarships of their day. Nearly all large gifts to Harvard are now made with the stipulation that Harvard may shift the funds away from the intended use if that purpose becomes outdated.