#101 - Why Advancement MarCom Is Still the Underdog (And Why That Needs to Change)
w/ Dan Giroux
Independent Consultant & Former Senior Advancement Communications Leader at Drexel University
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SHOW NOTES
In this episode, host John Azoni sits down with Dan Giroux, independent consultant and former senior advancement communications leader at Drexel University, to explore why Advancement Marketing & Communications (MarCom) is one of the most overlooked — yet most critical — functions in higher education today.
Dan shares insights from his three-act career journey (agency, in-house, and independent consulting), discusses the structural challenges holding advancement teams back, and outlines practical, realistic ways institutions can create more authentic, impactful content — even with limited resources. The conversation dives deep into storytelling, leadership alignment, donor engagement, and why higher ed can learn a lot from modern creators like MrBeast when it comes to community-driven philanthropy.
This episode is a must-listen for advancement leaders, MarCom professionals, and anyone navigating fundraising, alumni engagement, or institutional storytelling in a rapidly changing higher-ed landscape.
Key takeaways:
Advancement MarCom plays a bigger role than many institutions realize: When it’s treated as tactical support instead of a strategic function, schools miss opportunities to drive engagement, loyalty, and giving.
Collaboration starts with leadership alignment: Strong partnerships between Central MarCom and Advancement leaders make cross-team collaboration possible; misalignment at the top creates silos everywhere else.
Authentic storytelling comes from specificity, not polish: Donors and alumni connect more deeply with real, detailed stories than with highly produced, generic campaign messaging.
Stewardship is a growth strategy, not an afterthought: Post-gift communication and impact storytelling strengthen relationships and increase long-term support.
Limited resources don’t have to limit impact: Small teams can scale by prioritizing the right work, using freelancers strategically, and building repeatable content systems.
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00;00;00;09 - 00;00;23;23
John Azoni
Well. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Higher Ed Storytelling University podcast. Today we're talking about advancement, maqam, which is a topic that we haven't addressed as much on this show and especially doesn't get enough love, you know, across the board in higher ed. Today we've got Dan Giroux on the show. Dan is an independent Higher Ed Markham, consultant and he's got experience both on the agency side and the university side.
00;00;23;23 - 00;00;47;21
John Azoni
So he brings a varied perspective. So Dan shares regular thought leadership on LinkedIn on his newsletter, which you can sign up for on his LinkedIn profile. And he also speaks at different events like AMA and Case. He's hosted a couple different series on Enroll Phi. Number one is Advancement Amplified A.I. for Ayah and its sequel, which was advancement amplified the Aya marcum shift.
00;00;47;29 - 00;01;11;15
John Azoni
So if you like this episode, go check out those series as well and the Enroll Ify Pulse Check series. In this episode, we're talking about how advancement Markham is undervalued and poorly defined and how advancement storytelling differs from recruitment and the problem with going all in on one big anthem video. We also talk about Mr. B's philanthropy channel and what we can learn from that.
00;01;11;15 - 00;01;28;28
John Azoni
And honestly, folks, if you want to know how to engage an audience and keep them engaged and call them to action and all this stuff and you have no idea who Mr. Beast is, you should really change that. You should study the way he makes videos. All right. Here's my conversation with Dan Giroux. All right. Well, Dan, welcome to the show.
00;01;30;00 - 00;01;34;23
Dan Giroux
Yeah, thanks for having me, John. Looking forward to diving into my world a little bit.
00;01;35;19 - 00;01;56;16
John Azoni
Awesome. So I saw just before we hopped on that you had posted about AMA and obviously AMA super great, you know, conference kind of the Super Bowl of conferences. But what you noticed was kind of a lack of advancements representation. So what do you feel like the lay of the land is in terms of like how much focus we put on advancement.
00;01;57;10 - 00;02;27;23
Dan Giroux
Yeah, well, I think it seems simple, but I think one of the underlying court challenges and getting people to understand it better is that there is really not like a common definition of what advancement Markham is. And even those words themselves, advancement. Mark versus development. Mark Com versus advancement, communications versus development communications, they all tend to mean something different from one set up to an extent at different institutions.
00;02;28;04 - 00;02;50;25
Dan Giroux
And I think that makes it difficult for a even your own colleagues in your institution to wrap their head around like, well, what is the purview of that department? And, you know, let alone multiply that times however many hundreds and thousands institutions across the United States. And so there really isn't a easy to understand way to articulate that.
00;02;51;12 - 00;03;13;26
Dan Giroux
So when you think about, oh, admissions marketing, you're trying to bring in students, right? You can make it as simple as alumni and donor engagement, but once you get past that, it can get a little bit complicated in terms of what actually are we talking about. So I think that has prevented people from really understanding from just sort of saying who are maybe central Markham peers.
00;03;14;15 - 00;03;36;29
Dan Giroux
Oh, well, that's that's advancements work. You know they they do that they do the alumni and donor thing and we do this over here and you know that's their lane or the dreaded if you're in a comprehensive campaign that's advancements campaign. Well, no, actually, it should be a shared responsibility across our entire institution. But often that's not how it plays out, because people need to focus on what they're needing to focus on.
00;03;36;29 - 00;03;42;22
Dan Giroux
And oftentimes that does mean not as much collaboration, not as much integration as it could be.
00;03;43;13 - 00;03;57;22
John Azoni
Yeah. What are some of the major problems that you're seeing that, you know, on the advancement side, that it might be causing advancement? Markham To be, you know, sort of asleep or just not getting the love that needs or the collaboration that it needs.
00;03;58;13 - 00;04;28;09
Dan Giroux
Yeah, I would say, you know, the models that I believe, these are my own opinions, right? That tend to get it. There's a really strong relationship at the top. So if Central Markham is its own division and advancement is its own division in that environment, you've got two leaders at the helm who are close partners. They understand what each other and what each other's division does, and they foster more collaboration across the group.
00;04;28;22 - 00;04;50;05
Dan Giroux
I was fortunate to be an environment like that at Drexel University. In fact, our then senior vice president was part of the hiring committee for the incoming new senior vice president of University Marketing Communications. So, you know, they chaired that search right off the bat. We knew that it was going to be a successful positive relationship, and that's how it did turn out.
00;04;50;05 - 00;05;20;05
Dan Giroux
But when that's not the case, it makes the work much, much harder, unfortunately, because that fractured relationship then just sort of cascades down. And, you know, if you do have people in the middle who, you know, peers at different in different roles that know they should be collaborating, aren't quite sure if they really should be or how to go about it in a way that's going to be seen as acceptable by their leaders.
00;05;20;05 - 00;05;48;12
Dan Giroux
And so I would say that's probably the most important thing. And there's a lot of others you can dive into in terms of where intersections occur and how you can, you know, maximize the strategic collaboration around those areas, whether it's a university magazine, for example, or on social channels, because advancement will often manage alumni specific social channels, but sometimes not the main university channels that's often owned by Central.
00;05;48;12 - 00;06;15;14
Dan Giroux
So how do you, you know, work in this environment where you you need access to someone else's channels who can hit a big swath of your audience, but you don't have responsibility for those channels. So yeah, there's there's a lot of different ways of collaborating out there and a lot of models. But I would say probably the most important sign of whether everything else can start to be unlocked in a really productive way is, is there a strong relationship at the top?
00;06;16;00 - 00;06;44;17
John Azoni
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Just kind of that whole, you know, that idea of alignment really, really starts at the top and you know, for the people on the ground level trying to address it, sometimes it's trying to move a culture of non collaboration is I imagine I imagine very difficult. I want to hear to catch us up on your just your career up to this point like how did you get into advancement you mentioned working for for Drexel catch us up to speed on on your journey.
00;06;45;07 - 00;07;11;29
Dan Giroux
Yeah as an independent consultant now over the past year it's actually my what I call my third act. So I spent 12 years in the first leg of my career working at advertising and integrated marketing agencies and worked on a great deal of non-hybrid work. So a lot of consumer brands, a lot of B2B, some nonprofit work in the higher ed space.
00;07;11;29 - 00;07;39;14
Dan Giroux
I did two stints collectively, seven years, actually 160 over 90, which has emerged over that time frame as one of the big agencies that does hire at branding work. Couple. The marquee names would be like Notre Dame, Cornell and Emory, UVA, Dayton and many others. And so that really exposes you to do a lot of different high profile work in a pretty compressed timeframe.
00;07;39;14 - 00;08;05;29
Dan Giroux
So, you know, I look back on what did I get out of that? I got a tremendous education. You learn so much and it's so intense and a shorter time frame where you've got sort of career higher education, marketing people. It might it might take there in 22, you know, years or longer to have that opportunity at a comprehensive campaign or doing a university wide brand overhaul or, you know, one of those big, big, complex initiatives.
00;08;05;29 - 00;08;38;16
Dan Giroux
And, you know, certain agencies, you're getting these things all year long. And, you know, then part of the challenge, of course, becomes how do you juggle all of those? How do you put your focus and energy behind so many different types of big strategic projects and clients? And that's, you know, that that's really difficult. But we had started to go a little bit more into the campaign space, philanthropic campaigns and the end of 2016 or early 2017 is where I went in-house at Drexel and said, you know, that's the big missing piece.
00;08;38;16 - 00;09;03;28
Dan Giroux
I don't have I haven't really done hard core advancement work. Right. You know, that's what I call my second act. And so a new position was created at Drexel to lead to help build out and lead a what I'll call an enterprise wide Advancement Marcum team. So they had taken people that had marketing and communication related roles and responsibilities.
00;09;03;28 - 00;09;21;11
Dan Giroux
You might have sat in the annual Giving team, you might have been in alumni relations, you might have been in the advancement I.T. space, but you were enough of a developer that you could become the developer and the advancement markup. And so they sort of cobbled this group together and said, okay, we need to hire a new leader that knows what to do with this.
00;09;21;25 - 00;09;50;23
Dan Giroux
And in parallel to that, at that point, they had twice the board of trustees at Drexel had twice deferred the approving a launch timeframe for the comprehensive campaign. So when I was interviewing and when I started, it was, okay, go. So I had to make sense of this team. At the same time, I had to figure out how do I nimbly architect a campaign narrative platform for a $750 million effort?
00;09;50;23 - 00;10;16;03
Dan Giroux
And I would say if I didn't come out of the agency space and I didn't know how to move quick and navigate the internal and external partnerships as well and lean on personal relationships with, you know, freelance creative directors, boutique design firms, boutique website did all of this like it would not have been possible. So I really thrived in that because it was such a complex challenge.
00;10;16;03 - 00;10;44;02
Dan Giroux
And like those are the ones that light me up the most, that it was really rewarding. But as the campaign concluded in mid 2022, I had wrapped up my MBA at Drexel, so I was taking advantage of that benefit. I'd actually started an LLC in 2020 and began doing a little bit consulting on the side. So I would say from 2020 to late 2024 when I left Drexel, I had been really trying to figure out how do I get from, you know, Act two to Act three.
00;10;44;19 - 00;11;17;06
Dan Giroux
And Drexel ended up making that pretty easy in eliminating my role in November of 2024. And I felt bad for myself for, I don't know, maybe about 10 minutes where I was like, actually, this is incredible. I just rolled off of presenting at the annual AMA symposium on How to Elevate Advancement. Mark I have a really strong network, having been at agencies and been in-house, you know, over 20 years, and I've been doing a lot of personal brand work and already a little bit of, you know, consulting on the side.
00;11;17;06 - 00;11;21;16
Dan Giroux
So it was like, all right, game on from day one and have a look back.
00;11;22;01 - 00;11;30;09
John Azoni
Yeah. So in that personal career, you know, moving towards advancement, you know what was one struggle or fear that kind of not at you.
00;11;30;22 - 00;11;56;04
Dan Giroux
But yeah I mean it was it was high pressure. You had to help stand up this campaign in a fraction of the time that most institutions take to do that type of strategic communications work. So, you know, could I pull it off? It was also some turn over, I think within the first two months of me starting, my most senior creative person, a senior designer, decided they were going to opt out of a campaign.
00;11;56;04 - 00;12;23;11
Dan Giroux
They were of age of retirement and university was offering retirement incentive program. And they said, you know what? I will happily take that and retire into the sunset. And so, you know, it was struggle because I didn't have the really smart, really talented, high performing agency colleagues that have been so used to working with. So here I was trying to understand what do I have from a talent standpoint, What roles am I missing?
00;12;23;11 - 00;12;46;17
Dan Giroux
What do I need to replace? How do I make the business cases? What external partners do I need to bring in to help me do this work and plug the gap? So it was a highly entrepreneurial first year. Yeah, and again, because I came from a highly entrepreneurial agency background, I was able to figure it out. But yeah, I mean, part of me was like, Hey, is this going to be a massive failure?
00;12;47;02 - 00;13;11;10
Dan Giroux
Is this going to blow up epically? Yeah. When they said we cannot move the timeframe of this campaign a third time, was it going to be because of me? Right, Right. Unfortunately, you know, it wasn't. But yeah, you know, that was I think that was the underlying fear of can I actually make that transition? Can I be an in-house leader, not having the resources and the talent that you generally have working at agencies?
00;13;12;03 - 00;13;25;19
John Azoni
Yeah. Was there anything because I imagine, you know, you're building this campaign almost from scratch and there's there's probably things that you tried that that worked and things that didn't work. Can you give us a sense for like what worked and what didn't work that you learned from?
00;13;26;15 - 00;13;55;26
Dan Giroux
Yeah, I think that time frame actually worked to our advantage. So we're able to go in and build, do the discovery, build the strategy, build the creative platform, and then in partnership with my senior vice president and a few other leader like we went and essentially did the whole buy in circuit. But I think if we hadn't had that hey twice delayed situation and fall of 2017 is happening no matter what, right?
00;13;55;26 - 00;14;18;23
Dan Giroux
You know, like there could have been more room for other leaders, for trustees, for alumni, whoever to say. I mean I think the work was was strategically and creatively right. And I think that's reflected in how quickly people got on board, as well as some pretty key industry awards at one. But yeah, I would say time can be a double edged sword.
00;14;18;24 - 00;14;46;12
Dan Giroux
It can work against you and it can work for you. And I think it did both in that situation. But I would also just advise those who are in a position internally where you're spearheading you're part of the team spearheading the development of a big campaign to get ahead of the school and unit collaboration work. Because we weren't starting 18 months out, we didn't have the luxury of doing a lot of that work prior to launch.
00;14;46;27 - 00;15;10;03
Dan Giroux
We had to just get to launch and then we spent the next 12 or probably really closer to 18, 24 months, then trying to get all the different schools in units. And Drexel had at the time about 15 get them activated. So how do you get their respective giving pages on the school website to mirror messaging and storytelling and that sort of thing?
00;15;10;16 - 00;15;28;05
Dan Giroux
How do you build more robust stories to support kind of that overarching narrative? So there was a lot of build it and then build it out further after launch where normally you would have gone into a launch with a lot more of that school and unit activation work and storytelling in the can.
00;15;29;09 - 00;15;40;01
John Azoni
How have you seen, you know, advancement content strategy, you know, differ from recruitment strategy? What what was different about the, you know, the content that you had to put in place for that?
00;15;40;20 - 00;16;02;23
Dan Giroux
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's different when you look at the type of storytelling, there's different proof required, you know, for for students, of course, you're looking at a student experience and, you know, graduate post outcomes, other forms of of impacting outcomes too. But on the alumni and donor side, it's it's a bit different. How do you continuing to add value in the programs that you're offering to your alumni?
00;16;02;23 - 00;16;29;24
Dan Giroux
How are donors who are supporting institution making a tangible difference? So you're you know, you're kind of aiming at different things. It's all part of, you know, the the master flow of a journey, if you will, you know, from from prospective student to longtime alum to hopefully donor, etc.. But the way that higher education looks at it right now tends to be very like, okay, we're in this world, and then we're talking to them as different types of people in this world over here.
00;16;30;16 - 00;16;57;26
Dan Giroux
So I wish there was more cross-pollination and integration of that. That full journey advancement tries to prove impact through stewardship of how is that impacting students, how are we impacting the community? And that story can be 1 to 1 or it can be one too many. And that's also, I think somewhat true on the enrollment side. On the admissions side is probably more 1 to 1 to many than it is 1 to 1.
00;16;58;09 - 00;17;19;09
Dan Giroux
So I think that's where stewardship as a discipline in higher ed has a lot more room to do storytelling a little differently. And I think also creativity. But because the resources on the advancement side often aren't as extensive as they are on the admissions or enrollment marketing side, it can be pretty restrictive in terms of how you actually do that work.
00;17;19;21 - 00;17;43;09
Dan Giroux
Like, I was messing around with some thinking last week about. So I've got three kids, almost 14, almost 12, almost 11. So they're in eighth, sixth and third grades. And I got two boys that, you know, they watch do perfect. They're into Mr. Beast. And listen, I find that stuff entertaining to write and Mr. Beast, a little over a year or maybe maybe close to two years ago started Beast Philanthropy.
00;17;43;09 - 00;18;05;19
Dan Giroux
So an offshoot. He's got a philanthropy enterprise now and I'm looking at his video work go and there's so much here that higher ed can like take a page from how he engages his audiences and how specifically he's doing it with beast philanthropy where if I tried to have that conversation with somebody who does advancement storytelling right now, the blank stare would be coming back at me.
00;18;05;19 - 00;18;31;00
Dan Giroux
Like, what? What, what? What do you mean? Right? But, you know, it's not just about fundraising. The work that they do. It's about how do we get this community of beast Mr. B supporters activated. So it's not just me donating food to people that are food insecure, but like, I've now just got 10,000 followers to go and do the same in their community, right?
00;18;31;00 - 00;19;05;08
Dan Giroux
Like, that's the massive ripple effect that they're trying to produce. And I think, you know, in some cases we had an opportunity to do that kind of work at Drexel, but but not really. So I think as institutions look at how can we truly engage our alumni and donors, not just in asks for financial support, but like in the work that we're doing, it's doing more storytelling along those lines that really make, really make a difference of the impact and not financially in, but like volunteering of bettering our communities, bettering our societies.
00;19;05;21 - 00;19;26;07
Dan Giroux
And we like to tell the big story. Like, all right, it's campaign kickoff time, Let's do that Anthem video. Yeah. Or let's talk about let's tell the story about this donor because they gave a transformational you give $20 million gift and we want to steward them by telling a one too many story. But it's hard oftentimes for everyone else who can't make a $20 million gift.
00;19;26;16 - 00;19;42;09
Dan Giroux
Right. To identify with that like, well, that's great. What's that mean for me? What do I do with that? Like, how do I fit into this picture? Yeah, So, yeah, I think there's a whole lot of opportunity for how institutions could be doing content creation, storytelling and video work differently than they are right now.
00;19;42;24 - 00;20;06;07
John Azoni
Yeah, I love the Mr. Best example because I watch that all the time with my my daughter, my oldest ten. We watch Mr. Beast all the time, We watch board games and all of that stuff, but we haven't gotten too much into the philanthropy, the separate philanthropy channel, so I'll have to check that out. But I know that like even in his normal channel, there's often like kind of some episodes are like kind of have a philanthropic vibe to them.
00;20;06;16 - 00;20;30;06
John Azoni
But no question. I mean, he's amazing at engaging his audience in mobilizing his audience and getting you to stick around like for a half hour video. I mean, it really has become you know, I look at, you know, when I was when I was ten, you know, we would watch like TGIF and, you know, you'd have these like you you had these episodes that would come on TV on Friday or whatever that you look forward to.
00;20;30;06 - 00;20;53;27
John Azoni
And now, like the whole game has changed. It's like these independent creators are creating that level of like anticipation, Like we look forward to the next Mr. Beast video and he's so good at like, he's so good at like hooking you and keeping you engaged throughout. And I imagine that translates really well to the philanthropy side because, yeah, he's, I mean, he's just constantly giving tons of money away.
00;20;53;27 - 00;21;25;06
Dan Giroux
It's like, yeah, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy. And there's a lot of critiques with that, right? But part of what got what I took notice of the beast philanthropy is actually they one of their early projects was with a graduate from Drexel fellow named Evan Ellen, who started a nonprofit called Sharing Access. And they ended up partnering with them and putting, you know, gasoline on that incredible fire to provide meals and food to, you know, millions probably of, I don't know, at least thousands and thousands of people now.
00;21;25;06 - 00;22;06;24
Dan Giroux
And so that's been one of the major success stories, interestingly enough. But, yeah, I think, you know, there's again, there's a lot of different space to, I think, innovate in philanthropic or advancement storytelling in and not just focus on dollars like that's that's the easy story but like Mr. Beast does how are we raising doers like people who actually care to take the next step and go and try and maybe replicate that type of impact in their communities that we're illustrating to you, having been made possible by alumni and donors who care about this thing that our school is, you know, putting our our values, putting our our resources behind.
00;22;06;24 - 00;22;15;20
Dan Giroux
So, yeah, yeah, just just one way of like, how could we do things differently than the traditional historical approach to advancement storytelling?
00;22;16;05 - 00;22;41;06
John Azoni
Yeah, well, he, he does a great job of it's like he's bringing you along as he's doing the work. At least the, the stuff that I've seen where he's like, you know, saved at one. We watch recently was like, they saved a thousand animals from extinction or something like that, you know, And he like, flew all over the world, you know, and they're showing him like, you know, working with these different animals and working with the experts that are that are doing the stuff.
00;22;41;06 - 00;23;00;19
John Azoni
And he's like, there's one scene where was like, they're like trying to catch these giraffes in, you know, in their little dune buggy or whatever and like, give them vaccines. So they're like shooting this vaccine gun at these traps, you know, And it's just like it's just very sensational stuff. Like who? You don't get to see that stuff very often.
00;23;00;23 - 00;23;23;20
John Azoni
That's not like what colleges should necessarily be doing is like it's really dramatic stuff, but it's the idea of like, come along with us as we are doing this work. And oh, by the way, you can support us because I like I even pay attention to like how he markets his like festivals, like chocolate and he's got like candy and stuff like that or the sponsor for the episode.
00;23;23;20 - 00;23;33;06
John Azoni
He'll just he'll keep the story going and in the background kind of be like, Oh, by the way, while this person is trying to get out of this burning building, let me tell you about.
00;23;35;10 - 00;24;05;11
Dan Giroux
Our sustainably sourced chocolate and how we're paying paying fair wages to cacao farmers. No, I mean, yeah, like it's every second they know, right? It's a tension. And I think again, bringing it back to higher education, there's so much of let's just show you the finished polished story and and not all the stuff that happens like, right. It's not always a linear, it's circuitous sometimes, and sometimes there's losses along the way as much as there are wins.
00;24;05;11 - 00;24;33;05
Dan Giroux
And I think that's the stuff that just makes it feel real. So I'm not saying every you know, every video or every story should be approached that manner, but have a variety. You know, don't don't just do the big anthem videos. Don't just do the one too many. Do the one to ones. Yeah. Sometimes you're going to need to produce a video that, you know, maybe only the CEO of a foundation who made a $5 million gift or or their C-suite team is going to say, But there is value in still doing that too.
00;24;33;05 - 00;25;11;10
Dan Giroux
Yeah, but again, part of the challenge is, is limited resources. How how do we use those? How could we lean on peers who maybe have multimedia or video and photography? FTE is an essential mark on division, but like, you know, we're not collaborating with them or not collaborating with them the way that we should. So I think institutions as a whole need to get a lot more thoughtful about what do we already have that we could be using differently or, or open up and share with partners who would benefit substantially from having access to those and therefore, like we all benefit?
00;25;11;28 - 00;25;22;11
Dan Giroux
Yeah, we can raise more money. That only goes back to scholarships and aid and programs and research and all of the things that are that are core to an institution mission.
00;25;23;00 - 00;25;46;11
John Azoni
Yeah. And it makes me think because, you know, the big anthem video that's for I think everyone's minds go you know right off the bat like New campaign we need one big video that's going to make a splash. It's going to apply to everybody that we want to donate. You know, we just we're going to ask everyone to donate and we're going to ask everyone basically in the same, you know, one minute format here with this one video.
00;25;46;19 - 00;26;08;20
John Azoni
And I was writing in my newsletter last week about Zoom waiting room videos and how like I, I discovered this kind of platform for engaging people in a touchpoint, like right before a meeting, having a video that can automatically play. And then I talked about how like Pratt Institute and also Saint Mary's College, they both did their own waiting zoom waiting room videos.
00;26;08;20 - 00;26;29;04
John Azoni
And I talked about how like looking at the journey, well in that context was the student journey. But looking at the the donor journey, you know, what are all the touchpoints where you come into contact with people, where video could be an asset, and then what would it look like to create a video specifically for that touchpoint? I think that we don't do that enough.
00;26;29;06 - 00;26;48;04
John Azoni
I'm surprised at how many schools, you know, when we do video strategy, work with them. Have never done a student journey map before. I'm like, I. Oh, because I was asking them. I'm like, Do you have a journey map that someone's done, you know, for you? And it's never been a yes. It's we're always making one from from scratch, which is fine.
00;26;48;04 - 00;27;08;11
John Azoni
But it's like in those conversations you reveal, oh, like this would actually be this little nuance spot. Could actually be a great opportunity for us to create a video. So like, kind of like where you're saying where it's like maybe the video is just for the CEO. You know, that's that's going to donate all this money. I mean, that stuff is really effective.
00;27;08;11 - 00;27;34;18
John Azoni
We worked with in my previous job, we worked with the food guys to do corporate video. We worked with the food service company, and they were trying to get this multi-year multimillion dollar contract with GM. And they hired us to, you know, make a video specifically for this pitch meeting, and they won. And they said it had a lot to do with that story, you know, that we told because it was so specific to the moment.
00;27;35;00 - 00;27;38;09
John Azoni
And then they had this contract investments.
00;27;38;09 - 00;28;05;26
Dan Giroux
I mean, that kind of hyper personalization, like we get hyper personalized messaging as consumers all day long from X, Y and Z company, right. Or x, Y down to the X, Y and Z local store or whatever. So I think there is an expectation that you're, you know, that you should be truly known better by your alma mater, by your institution, or if you're a friend and you're donor, like they, you know, they're collecting that data.
00;28;05;26 - 00;28;33;16
Dan Giroux
They should know a thing or two about you. Yet we still spend so much non-personalized outrage or, you know, broadcast to everybody instead of finding smarter ways to do segmentation in back to your anthem video. Like, listen, I love Anthem video, the right Anthem video. It's awesome. You know, it's said it sets the stage, It sends a message, you know, in a campaign kickoff type environment, I would say don't make the ask in the video, but like there's lots of other places and ways to do storytelling.
00;28;33;16 - 00;28;53;26
Dan Giroux
And it shouldn't be this, Hey, every five years we have an opportunity to make a video, you know, at a at a certain professionalized production level. And, you know, and this is like, do it ongoing only. Maybe you invest, you make the case to get the resources and do one big shoot in the upfront and you're building your library.
00;28;54;08 - 00;29;17;29
Dan Giroux
But then keep doing that work over the length of a campaign, because after that launch, it's the storytelling, it's the content, it's the celebrations. Like that's the type of stuff that is going to keep people engaged and caring about what you're doing. And it doesn't need to be very cost expensive if you do a big shoot upfront and then supplement it with targeted things here and there.
00;29;17;29 - 00;29;40;09
Dan Giroux
And then you've got through a combination of maybe an in-house resource and a nimble, cost effective external partner. Like you can be turning out this stuff at a consistent pace and to your point, nuanced to the audience or to the opportunity in a much sharper way. And like it's not it's not unattainable. You just have to develop the strategy.
00;29;40;09 - 00;29;49;03
Dan Giroux
Yes, it takes some resources and commitment, but again, it's a different way of doing the work that I think most schools are doing right now.
00;29;49;20 - 00;30;06;16
John Azoni
Yeah, it's definitely getting out of that mindset of like one piece of content to rule them all. You know, that's that's going to solve all the needs. So when you look at typical donor journey from awareness to giving money, where do you see the main leverage points where content can make a big difference? If done right.
00;30;06;28 - 00;30;31;18
Dan Giroux
As a steward? And I don't mean necessarily just by giving, but let's call it as a as a post engagement opportunity. So there are some platforms out there that enable you to deliver personalized video, For example. Thank you is one that we used at Drexel where. All right, let's just say you've got your annual leadership giving society people who are giving a minimum of I don't know, 20 $500 a year collectively, you know, 2 to 1 or different things.
00;30;32;03 - 00;31;06;14
Dan Giroux
And you're putting on an event curated and bit specifically for them. And let's just say you get 200 of them there to be able to capture content on site during that event, build a little bit of a story, a little bit of a narrative, weave it together and send out a 62nd clip that has maybe it's the director of that benefiting program that you expose them to at the event or or you've got multiple people who you work, faculty and staff or you recorded Thank you or students thank you video messages with inner splice with some of those assets that you captured at the event.
00;31;06;24 - 00;31;31;18
Dan Giroux
It doesn't need to be like in fact, it should be more raw, lower production value because it feels more authentic, it feels more or real. And if you can plan for that and send that out afterward, it makes the feelings they felt like that much more powerful. So yeah, I'd say like again, it doesn't have to be a big, elaborate, expensive, time consuming thing.
00;31;31;27 - 00;31;57;15
Dan Giroux
Send an intern, send a team member, ask a colleague who's not part of your marketing communication team, but they're attending to grab some photos, like just make it a collective effort. I mean, that's just one way. But, you know, that's something that I've seen have a lot of success. And I remember the the open rates on those type of videos that we would send out through this platform, 80% somewhere in that vicinity.
00;31;58;01 - 00;32;23;11
Dan Giroux
So eight out of ten people who get that video are opening it and watching it. Tell me, tell me that's not impactful. Right. And and it's hard to trace that to outcomes after. But you can't not do the work. Right? Is that the thing that made them come back to the next event or give $1,000 to the next annual day of giving instead of 500 that they gave the previous year?
00;32;23;26 - 00;32;35;16
Dan Giroux
I don't know. But it helps, you know. Yeah. So it's I get it. It can be hard to like really draw the line to specifically to rely on that kind of stuff, but it's the right way to do the work.
00;32;36;04 - 00;33;00;14
John Azoni
Yeah, kind of just thinking of content marketing, not so much as creating a piece and then being done, but it's it's an ongoing, you know, it's an ongoing engagement and re-engagement with people. And I think about that too. Like, you know, when I, when I meet new people, like on LinkedIn or something, you know, I have people that will ask me like, Oh, does the podcast like how does that help, you know, your business?
00;33;00;14 - 00;33;18;19
John Azoni
Or like, do you get more work from like LinkedIn or whatever? And I'm always like, I don't know. I'm like, it's always like, it's always all of it. You know, it's it's like it's the newsletter, it's the podcast, It's it's LinkedIn content and it's like it's usually a collection of those before someone actually takes an action, you know?
00;33;18;19 - 00;33;33;26
John Azoni
And I end up on a, you know, a call with somebody. So I really have grown to think that like it's not necessarily be everywhere, but it's show up consistently with consistent content, you know, in more than one place. And and I think that that's.
00;33;33;26 - 00;33;34;20
Dan Giroux
Great way to look at it.
00;33;35;02 - 00;33;51;09
John Azoni
More success what's if we were to do and it doesn't have to be video if you're you know advising on like what makes a great donor impact story you know what makes that feel authentic. You mentioned it to could be lo fi like you know have an intern film it or something like that that that could be one lever to pull.
00;33;51;09 - 00;33;59;00
John Azoni
But what would be like the levers to pull for, you know, how do you define authenticity, you know, in that donor impact story scenario?
00;33;59;18 - 00;34;29;24
Dan Giroux
Yeah, I think to the level of detail that you can be as specific as possible. I'm thinking of of the tradition at Drexel. A Drexel alumni have been doing Scott the Turkey project for over 50 years. And it's sort of one of the big signature alumni engagement opportunities every year. And to be able to show how your family is in the middle of your region are benefiting from these holiday meals that alumni, faculty, staff, parents, etc. are donating to make possible.
00;34;29;24 - 00;35;11;09
Dan Giroux
You know, and of course, there's a lot of sensitivity to, you know, capturing or showcasing the people on the other end of that. But I'd say being a specific of tracking the impact and also respectful and how you do that storytelling, the example, you know, I just gave the recipients of those meals and might not be comfortable being on film or being on camera, but can you capture what we would call the distribution day where, you know, all those turkeys and meals that were made possible are being delivered and you've got a community of of internal supporters doing the work to take them off the trucks and package them up and so, yeah, be specific,
00;35;11;09 - 00;35;32;21
Dan Giroux
be respectful. You know, you don't want to spotlight deficits, you know, as part of that. Clearly, I think you want to try and position, you know, the strengths of a program or gift, make it as relatable as possible. You know, part of this storytelling is, again, going back to the example I gave much earlier of we got a $20 million gift.
00;35;32;21 - 00;35;56;05
Dan Giroux
We want to make sure we're spotlighting that donor or organization you want to illustrate desirable behavior. So what can you take from why did they make that gift? What what does it mean to them? They could have given that money to a variety of other places, and maybe they do give money to a variety of places. But like, what was it about this specific opportunity that called to them?
00;35;56;18 - 00;36;27;04
Dan Giroux
And then how you take those insights, those messages, and try and make it relevant to your 180,000 plus living alumni base? Right. So like there's the Mr. B's multiplier effect. It's like we want you to learn something from this so that hopefully it will inspire you to do something else. That's good. Whatever that good action might be. And I think sometimes the storytelling focuses too much on trying to steward that one big gift donor as a as opposed to actually doing that other work at his mansion.
00;36;27;17 - 00;37;06;25
John Azoni
Yeah, for sure. And I think giving specific is huge. I think that solves a lot of problems, you know, for authenticity and just relatable ality and emotional connection. I think those three, I would say, can be solved a lot by just getting specific about what you're doing because then removing from these like vague platitudes of, you know, these are our values, this is our mission, this is what we, you know, all this stuff to like taking us behind the scenes and actually, you know, bringing us along and showing us specific moments, telling us specific stories, you know, that all that stuff I just feel like lends itself so much more to authenticity because, you know,
00;37;06;25 - 00;37;29;21
John Azoni
when you have this sort of scripted anthem video that's, you know, clearly scripted and you've got the poetic voiceover and stuff like that, like that's fine, but just because you shot that of real students, for our real alumni, for example, you know, that's not necessarily checking that authenticity box. It's like clearly scripted. This thing, you know, people can kind of see through that.
00;37;30;02 - 00;37;37;29
John Azoni
So I really think that getting specific is such great advice That just solves a lot of a lot of problems in the content game.
00;37;38;15 - 00;37;58;02
Dan Giroux
Yeah. And in that like be willing to take some risks. I think institutions are so risk averse. You know there are people that have really strategic ideas. They they you know, the risk is calculated, right? Like they're they're trying to mitigate what could happen if you try a different approach, but you try different approaches, you see what works.
00;37;58;17 - 00;38;14;16
Dan Giroux
I think there is such a like, hey, we've got to operate within this box. And if and if we don't like, we're not doing the thing that I don't know, try to just try it. Give a GoPro to a student, like do alumni takeovers on social media, like be more willing to try new things and see what works.
00;38;14;16 - 00;38;32;12
Dan Giroux
And again, it's not like, okay, now we've got to do this one thing and that's the only thing we're going to do. It's to your point, it's it's all like, let's have seven or eight different ways in which we do storytelling and engage people. Let's not just put all our eggs in that one anthem video basket or the big transformational gift story basket.
00;38;33;02 - 00;38;39;22
John Azoni
Right? For sure. Are there any schools that are doing advancement content really? Well, it does. It doesn't have to just be video.
00;38;40;04 - 00;39;02;10
Dan Giroux
I was going to say. Does it have to be video? You know, I, I put a post out on LinkedIn the other week. I've been tracking on NC State for for a handful of years. I think the work that they did in developing a brand narrative and image campaign and how they connected that to what became their comprehensive campaign, you know, think and do.
00;39;02;10 - 00;39;30;06
Dan Giroux
And this is since concluded was really smart and they carried that through all their different channels and content and strong fashion. And they're still out there doing really interesting things. And it seems tactically maybe obvious, but you'd be surprised how many schools don't have an alumni newsletter on LinkedIn. Hm NC State does, and they curate. It doesn't require I would imagine it doesn't require a tremendous amount of additional effort.
00;39;30;06 - 00;40;09;06
Dan Giroux
But how are you taking content that either your central mark division or your advancement, you know, some combination of relevant stuff for alumni, package it together, make it look, you know, professional. You've got built in distribution. How many channels can you say that about right now? There's always that bit of a challenge of, okay, is it the alumni channel that you're pushing, you know, to what may be like 18 or 20,000 people that are subscribing and following you or the main university LinkedIn page, which I don't know what the numbers are these days, but you know, a year or two at Drexel, a year or two ago, it was over 120,000 followers.
00;40;09;06 - 00;40;31;17
Dan Giroux
And the vast majority of those are alumni, not all of them. So, you know, you probably want to be conscious that it's alumni and friends, people who are some level supportive about your institution. But why wouldn't you be doing that? You know, so I'm always kind of keeping my eyes out for and where I can and where when I have the bandwidth to call attention to people that are doing that work well.
00;40;31;17 - 00;40;49;18
Dan Giroux
And that would be a recent example of how they've been doing that for a while now. I'm still not seeing a lot of other institutions do that. There's a lot of strategic reasons why they should. Why aren't you? You know, and it's it's usually boiled down to something simple, like, well, many channels are managed by that division and not ours.
00;40;49;18 - 00;41;15;25
Dan Giroux
So, you know, we don't have authority or it's complicated or it's one more thing we need to ask one or people to do. Well, okay, How much of a thing like, let's go down that rabbit hole, Is it ultimately three collective staff team hours per month to repackage that thing once you've, you know, putting a little bit of upfront time to, to align on a strategy, it's really not as much effort as you probably think it is.
00;41;16;12 - 00;41;45;11
John Azoni
Yeah, I actually started doing that with with blog posts and you know, I'd have I'd write a, a lot of times like my newsletter and idea starts when in the newsletter gets kind of unpacked a little further in a blog post. Then I started having like I have an executive, like an a virtual assistant on Upwork and, you know, I pay her 15 bucks an hour and she took, you know, 30 minutes to show her how to repackage that blog post to a LinkedIn article and just press play.
00;41;45;16 - 00;42;03;15
John Azoni
And she'll just go check like every few weeks as their new blog article, and then she'll go boom, boom, boom. And then she'll be like, all right, there's a new draft, you know, on LinkedIn for you. I mean, so it's just like easy stuff that, you know, should it necessary really be like the director level person, you know, doing all that.
00;42;03;15 - 00;42;20;22
John Azoni
But like if you can systematize things like that that are going to have big impact, I think distribution, figuring out how you can just systematize distribution is hugely impactful. It doesn't always have to be, you know, hugely expensive or even it doesn't have to bog down the internal team at all in advancement.
00;42;20;22 - 00;42;56;22
Dan Giroux
It's that's very much the case in investment. You for the most part you know your constituents hopefully you have you know their records in your database and so it's a matter of obviously ongoing. You want to maintain the quality of that data. People alumni, move around, change physical addresses, email addresses, that sort of thing. But you've got their contact information when you can supplement that with maybe university marketing Communication manager channels like Main Social or magazine, if they happen to own the magazine as opposed to advancement, you know, lives in different places, in different institutions.
00;42;56;22 - 00;43;18;28
Dan Giroux
But it's just how do you how do you collaborate? How do you integrate? How do you have those systems so that you can do the work efficiently? You know, one of the things that that really rattles my brain is there's a strong hesitancy to be using, I think, more freelancers and or boutique external comms partners like they're part of in institutions.
00;43;18;28 - 00;43;52;16
Dan Giroux
Advancement work is a volume game. Mm hmm. Don't put that volume all on your internal resources. Who also need to do the strategic work in addition to the right kind of execution. You've got to find that right balance. And I think it's so easy just to say we can't. They got to do all when the reality is using, you know, your personal example, you know, what's the corollary to finding an executive assistant that you can pay a little bit of money to on an hourly basis to do this routine thing that doesn't require a great deal of, you know, strategy.
00;43;52;21 - 00;44;29;29
Dan Giroux
You show them how to do it and all of a sudden you freed up your senior year senior writer, or if it's visual work, it's, you know, a junior graphic designer instead of your creative director who's having to virginal in our little if things for an annual appeal that's probably only going to raise $2,000 like yeah put the right work where it belongs and as part of your staffing model have dollars set aside for reoccurring lower level volume based work that you can offload to people that you train up and you trust, you know, and they can extend your bench and be part of the team.
00;44;30;07 - 00;44;53;02
John Azoni
Absolutely. All right. So wrapping up here, a lot of advancement teams, at least that I've come across. It's usually like one person, you know, that's kind of managing a lot of it or a very small team. And then I think, you know, creating the idea of creating ongoing content for a a very small team that maybe is budget strapped is very daunting.
00;44;53;04 - 00;45;05;29
John Azoni
What would be your tips for this sort of small team or one person does it all team to kind of start to take steps in these directions of having more success with content creation and volume?
00;45;06;10 - 00;45;30;00
Dan Giroux
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, God bless the one person scenario. I mean, that's it sounds like a pathway to burnout. You know, hopefully most people aren't in that situation, but it's really important to be clear on what your scope of work is. So how do you prioritize, you know, ensure that you're saying saying, yes, if you even have the ability to say yes, many don't have the ability to say yes and no.
00;45;30;12 - 00;45;51;11
Dan Giroux
So having a really clear charge from your leadership team, okay, what are my priorities? What should I be focusing maybe 80% of my time on? And then where do I have the 20% of more sort of discretionary, whether that's exploring, you know, or revisiting past work to see what we could be doing differently or exploring new and innovative approaches.
00;45;51;24 - 00;46;17;10
Dan Giroux
You've got to make space for how do we create or recreate things that are going to be more effective, having a stable of freelancers or independent contractors, you know that you can economically call upon to help expand your team? You know, that would be another idea showing the ROI of work. So I did in my role when I was executive director and then assistant vice president of Advancement, Communications and Stewardship.
00;46;17;10 - 00;46;39;29
Dan Giroux
A lot of what I did was make business cases. You know, we need an FTE to do this. Here's why. Here's what the potential for a return on that could be. Or we'd like to invest in video storytelling. We want to do five videos. So it's going to be expensive. You know, $50,000 will have to go through an RFP, but like we're going to use it in this way over the next couple of years.
00;46;39;29 - 00;47;06;00
Dan Giroux
And this is going to be our primary tranche of video storytelling work for, you know, the next three years of this campaign. So being really smart about you know, the things that you choose to to fight for and building business cases, because, you know, that's ultimately what like senior vice president of advancement or vice chancellors are looking at is I've got a finite amount of resources.
00;47;06;00 - 00;47;23;19
Dan Giroux
You're asking me to put it here. I've got 25 other department heads asking me to put it there. They're there in there. So you know which which are the right ones. So you got to always make sure that you're making the case from a business standpoint as clear and convincing as possible. And you're not always going to get that.
00;47;23;19 - 00;47;45;03
Dan Giroux
Yes, right. So then what do you do instead? Or what do we if we need to choose between priorities, being unafraid to have that conversation with your leadership team or colleagues, to say I'm only one person or we're only three or five people, here are the things that leadership has asked us to focus on. Your request falls outside that, but you know, we can still brainstorm with you.
00;47;45;03 - 00;48;05;01
Dan Giroux
We can facilitate an introduction where you can do that work with an independent contractor. We've already vetted who we work with, so we trust them. You can trust them. I think there is an entrepreneur reality that you have to approach and not be defeated when when you get that. No, it's like, okay, what's plan B? Okay, What's plan C?
00;48;05;15 - 00;48;15;16
Dan Giroux
You know, at some point you need to lay it down. But it's real easy to be discouraged. And I think, you know, you would find in many of those cases there's probably another approach still.
00;48;16;00 - 00;48;28;03
John Azoni
Yeah. Awesome. Dan, that's been a great conversation. What's one final like put a bow on it for us. What's one final thought that you want to leave our audience with? That kind of sums up your point of view on advancement.
00;48;28;03 - 00;48;54;05
Dan Giroux
Marcum Yeah, advancement work in general, not just Markham, matters more now than ever before. For all the reasons we probably are aware of declining enrollments at most institutions and not so friendly. Federal Government Polling research dollars continue national trends of alumni, giving the alumni participation rate declining like it's. It's a pretty scary place out there right now for higher education.
00;48;54;18 - 00;49;17;03
Dan Giroux
And if you haven't taken the opportunity and I guess I'm really talking to leaders here, if you haven't taken the opportunity maybe from a central Markham point of view to look over at your advancement colleagues and genuinely say that work matters, how do we partner with them to do it more effectively, to raise, you know, raise all boats?
00;49;17;13 - 00;49;38;02
Dan Giroux
Or if you're an advancement leader and you're trading your advancement? Mark com or advancement cards or development cards, whatever it might be labeled and in charge. But you're treating that team as more of a tactical like back of the house service provider. You're missing out on a huge opportunity for that to be delivering more impact for your organization.
00;49;38;02 - 00;50;02;28
Dan Giroux
And so if you haven't looked at it, make 2026 calendar year, not fiscal year. So don't wait until the summer. But, you know, sometimes you got to wait for budgets, but the sooner you get at that work of trying to figure out how do we make this advancement mark function more strategic, more impactful, more nimble, more tied to ROI, the better your organization is going to be.
00;50;03;03 - 00;50;05;10
Dan Giroux
So don't wait to get at it.
00;50;05;21 - 00;50;10;05
John Azoni
All right. I love that. That's a great final thought for us. So where can people find you and connect with you?
00;50;10;05 - 00;50;31;19
Dan Giroux
Dan Yeah, it's LinkedIn, as I mentioned, very active there. I post probably a handful times a week, you know, trying to spur different ideas, different kind of conversations. And I have a newsletter. You can get to it from that LinkedIn profile. I'd love to say it's weekly. I'd love to say it's biweekly, it's become monthly, maybe over the last.
00;50;31;22 - 00;50;32;19
John Azoni
I feel like any.
00;50;33;08 - 00;50;55;06
Dan Giroux
Year. Yeah, yeah. Weekly, monthly ish. No, I you know, I've over the past I started in January and I've probably done close to 30 outreaches at this point. So cool. I'm committed to it. It's a terrific outlet, I think, for my thinking as well as just providing free value to people in this space where there's not a lot out there.
00;50;55;06 - 00;51;17;02
Dan Giroux
Like I've done the research, I've looked out there and said, Who's putting things out there about advancement? Markham that I can learn from and there's not a lot. So that's why I do the podcast, that's why I do the newsletter and that's why I'm active, you know, stir in trouble up on LinkedIn. I've got an article, a research article coming out in the Journal of Education Advancement and Marketing sometime soon.
00;51;17;02 - 00;51;31;18
Dan Giroux
So these resources will begin to exist for people in advancement where right now there's just not a lot of it. Maybe you get it at a conference, but it's only part of it. It's not the whole thing. So yeah, look for me in all those places and hopefully you'll find some value.
00;51;31;27 - 00;51;33;09
John Azoni
It sounds good, man. Thanks for being here.
00;51;33;20 - 00;51;34;25
Dan Giroux
All right, John. Thanks for having me.
