On a Wing and a Prayer

“Having gone through that, our level of passion for what we do and our level of confidence about overcoming obstacles is so much greater,” he adds.

Those lessons — the saving grace, if you will, of the arduous campaign that left his team in a state of “stunned silence” — are considerable.

First off, Carpenter says, UGM had been relying on direct mail “too heavily for too long,” at the expense of major donors.