In the red-hot economy of barely three years ago, when Georgetown University was collecting more big-money gifts from alumni and loyal supporters than it ever dreamed possible, June 30, 2003, was set as the magic date -- the day school officials would announce that eight years of fundraising had reached $1 billion.

Two weeks before the deadline, Georgetown's Third Century Campaign has turned into a squeaker, charitably speaking. Although school officials remain optimistic about several major donations in the works, the total stands at $923 million after two years of declining contributions.

"Clearly, people are not feeling as wealthy as they did three or four years ago," said J. Michael Goodwin, vice president for alumni and university relations. "It's a question of going to them and persuading them that giving to Georgetown is crucial at this moment."

A number of colleges across the country also are struggling to meet their goals in a sluggish economy that has thrown a curve at splashy fundraising campaigns that came to symbolize campus image and institutional self-worth in the late 1990s. Among the schools staring down June 30 deadlines on their five- to seven-year campaigns: Rice University in Houston, which has raised $438 million toward its $500 million goal; Mills College in Oakland, Calif., which is $20 million short of its $100 million goal; and Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, which is $13 million shy of a $150 million target.

Such sums can hardly be considered failures, but they are telling in the choreographed world of higher education fundraising, whose leaders have long avoided setting goals they couldn't reach.

A few years ago, colleges routinely raced past the lofty benchmarks they had set for themselves. Today, some of the institutions not fortunate enough to wrap up their campaigns before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or the burst of the tech stock bubble are adjusting to the new reality of their boosters' reduced financial circumstances.

Schools are delaying construction projects, scaling back planned scholarship programs or lowering the dollar threshold for a donor to name an endowed chair.

"In the salad years, when the stock market was high and everyone was feeling euphoric, you could go to a wealthy donor with a long list of options for support, and they could pick and choose what they'd do," said Eric C. Johnson, Rice's vice president for resource development. Now, "the reaction is, 'Gee, can I put this off until the market improves?' "

College fundraisers say there's nothing quixotic about the big, round numbers they set as their campaign targets. Most explain that their dollar goals represent the sum of the institution's needs -- a laundry list of projects and priorities, from bolstering the endowment to building high-tech facilities to underwriting academic programs that will draw the brightest young minds.

But goals have also traditionally been set by a far more pragmatic set of calculations: what college leaders think they can reasonably get. Big campaigns are preceded by months of study, during which colleges hire consultants to perform confidential interviews with scores of potential supporters, most of whom the schools have courted for years. The consultants try to assess how much money each supporter may be willing to give, then add it all up to find a feasible goal for the college to pursue.

Such assessments helped Mills, a small liberal arts college for women, fix on its $100 million goal in October 1999. The studies indicated that school leaders could expect to find at least one donor with a minimum of $10 million to spare -- enough to put his or her name on the new science building or the renovated music building. Thus far, the largest single gift to come through has been $3 million.

"The big gifts come in installments, and people aren't willing to make the multiple-year commitment," said Sally Randel, Mills's vice president for institutional advancement.

Colleges typically spend a few years tapping donors in the "quiet phase" of a campaign to firm up their estimates, often collecting 40 percent or more of the total before they announce their goal. Georgetown's unexpected success in its early campaign stages prompted officials to push an initial $500 million goal to $750 million by the time of a public kickoff in 1998, then to $1 billion two years later.

Many colleges play down the significance of the day-specific deadlines they trumpeted during their kickoffs. At the University of Kentucky, which is about $26 million short of its $600 million goal, Vice President for Development Terry Mobley maintains there is "nothing magical" about the June 30 date -- "that's just the end of the fiscal year" -- and said his school will hit its mark within the calendar year.

"To have anything of a celebratory nature, you're not going to do it in the middle of the summer," Mobley said.

Others, though, take those deadlines seriously. Haverford College, which has fallen behind schedule on the $200 million campaign it hoped to wrap up a year from now, considered extending the campaign but decided to push ahead -- even though the small Pennsylvania college would have to raise the greatest one-year sum in its history to make it.

"All of us as humans tend to respond to a goal, a deadline," said Vice President Jill L. Sherman. "If that deadline isn't clear for people, neither are your expectations."

Bruce Flessner, a Minneapolis-based consultant, believes things could get worse for higher education campaigns before they get better. Foundations usually base their disbursements on three-year investment averages, which this year will include three straight years of losses, he said.

But Georgetown's Goodwin remains confident that the coming weeks will bring some surprisingly large gifts, which tend to arrive at the fiscal year's end.

If not, the work won't be over, he said. "Our philosophy is to stay with the donors during this period. They care about this university. Maybe five years from now, their situation will be different."