Concerned about Senator Barack Obama’s presidential fund-raising, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has dispatched former President Bill Clinton to attend 16 fund-raisers in the last six weeks and to lead conference calls and Internet appeals to donors, in some cases assessing Mr. Obama’s positions on Iraq.

Democrats close to the couple say that Mr. Clinton’s efforts on his wife’s behalf were just beginning and that they were likely to accelerate after he finishes writing a book this spring. Several donors said that Mr. Clinton’s role was even greater than they originally expected after Mrs. Clinton announced her candidacy on Jan. 20.

The early deployment of Mr. Clinton highlights the continuing concerns in the Clinton camp about the strength of Mr. Obama’s candidacy and his fund-raising prowess. The Clinton camp has tried to stop any drift of Democratic donors to the Obama camp, since the campaign finance reporting period ending tonight is seen as a huge test of the campaigns’ money-raising abilities as they gird for a crush of early primaries.

When Mrs. Clinton announced for the presidency in January, the former president was mentioned in meetings as one of several fund-raising surrogates for her.

In short time, he helped raise about $2 million at small dinner parties in Manhattan, sometimes staying far later into the night than planned, and is now ending March with a flourish. After a gala last night headlined by Mrs. Clinton that raised $1 million, Mr. Clinton was scheduled to join her for a cocktail party this evening with the music producer Timbaland in Miami, and a second party where event chairmen were hoping to raise $100,000 each.

Even as Mr. Clinton pursues his tasks with gusto, Clinton donors and Democratic allies say that the campaign has also been sensitive about using him too much, for fear that he might overshadow his wife or come to be seen as an overused or exploited asset.

This sensitivity has been evident recently. While Mr. Clinton’s schedule has been hectic at times, with some days layered with two fund-raisers, Clinton advisers have tried to minimize his role and his desire to trounce Mr. Obama in fund-raising for the first three months of 2007.

Still, John Catsimatidis, a New York fund-raiser who held an event at his apartment with Mr. Clinton on March 3, recalled that at a meeting of fund-raisers in Manhattan soon after Senator Clinton’s announcement, the former president came up briefly in conversation and was not a focus of the fund-raising strategy. But his recent burst of money-raising tells a different story.

“It’s a lot more than anyone expected two months ago,” Mr. Catsimatidis said. “President Clinton is a competitive guy, and he has said himself that the March 31 fund-raising deadline was the first primary.”

The Clintons’ fund-raising zeal, however, has left some donors bristling. Jim Neal, a North Carolina investment banker who supported Gen. Wesley K. Clark and then, in 2004, Senator John Kerry, said he was alienated by the effort “to put absolutely unprecedented expectations and pressure on donors,” like proposing that some fund-raisers would yield more than $1 million for Mrs. Clinton.

“It’s almost like a shakedown — you’re either with us or you’re not,” said Mr. Neal, who participated in an early conference call involving the Clinton campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, but is not seen as a major player in the Clintons’ world.

“I just find the squeeze, this early, to be quite vulgar,” Mr. Neal added. “This idea that you should try to K.O. other candidates by simply overwhelming them with the amount of money you have in the bank. It’s a bullying tactic.”

Mr. Neal said he supported Mr. Clinton in 1992 and 1996, but did not plan to support Mrs. Clinton.

A spokeswoman for Mr. McAuliffe and campaign officials declined to respond to Mr. Neal’s comments.

With tonight’s fund-raising deadline comes major questions for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama about the size of their war chests, their ability to raise money online and nationwide, and what advantage, if any, Mr. Obama enjoys among antiwar Democrats, with whom he is popular.

Mrs. Clinton, as a veteran of her husband’s two campaigns and her own two Senate races in New York, started off with a far larger donor database and greater name recognition than Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and she had been widely expected to do significantly better than him in fund-raising for this period.

One donor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said the Clintons would not like his speaking openly, said the Clinton campaign had been trying to lower fund-raising expectations because of a concern about a surge by Mr. Obama, who has shown broad appeal among black, female and young Democrats and has captured some big-money donors like Orin Kramer, a former Clinton supporter.

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