Take your nonprofit to the next level with Google Ad Grants
Welcome to one of the most comprehensive guides to Google Ad Grants! Here, you’ll find everything you need to know about how your nonprofit can benefit from up to $120,000 per year in free Google advertising via the Google for Nonprofits program.
In this blog post, we’ll walk you through what is the Google Ad Grants, how it works, who can apply and how to sign up for the programme. This is a 2-part guide, visit part 2 if you’re looking for information on how to Create and Manage your Google Ads campaigns.
Ready to jump in?
- How does Google Ad Grants work?
- Are you eligible?
- Registering For The Google Ad Grants
- Setting up your Google Ads account
1. How does Google Ad Grants work?
The Google Ad Grants allows eligible nonprofits to show ads for relevant searches on Google. Google picks up the tab for this, to the tune of a maximum of $10,000 per month.
As a simple example, here you can see the UK homeless charity Shelter displaying an ad when I search for “support homeless charity”:
If I click on this ad from Shelter, Shelter’s Ad Grants account is “charged” the cost of the click. Their account will show that their keyword received 1 click, which cost $1.14 (for example). This $1.14 isn’t charged to Shelter, it’s accrued against Shelter’s $10,000 allocation for the month.
Now that we’re clear on how the Ad Grants works at a basic level, let’s move on to the benefits.
How can Google Ad Grants help my organisation?
Google has a 91% share of the global search engine market, and there are approximately 8.5 billion searches conducted daily. The opportunity to connect with people searching for things relevant to your organisation is huge.
With Google Ad Grants, you’ll have the ability to connect with the right people. This might be those looking for your support, people who want to donate to your cause, or individuals seeking information about a particular topic.
We’ve seen nonprofits use the free monthly advertising to do things like:
- Attract more donations online
- Fundraise for specific campaigns or initiatives
- Find new patrons
- Find volunteers
- Promote events and festivals
- Raise awareness of their work
- Provide free resources
Although Google offers $10,000 a month in free advertising, we’ve seen some charities struggle to spend all of it. Your ability to utilise the full monthly allowance can depend on three main factors:
- How many people are searching for things you want to show Ads for in your target location. A nonprofit working in a very localised geographic area or focusing on a specialist field (for example, a rare form of cancer) is less likely to use the full Ad Grants monthly allocation simply because there are fewer searches on Google that are relevant to the organisation than a national nonprofit or one working in a broader field.
- How much content you have on your website. A nonprofit or charity website with dozens of in-depth articles about relevant topics has a greater ability to target a broader range of relevant keywords and get more clicks on their ads than a nonprofit with a website containing only a few pages.
- How well managed the nonprofit Ad Grants account is. Proper Ad Grants account management can lead to big increases in clicks and conversions if it is managed effectively.
2. Are you eligible?
Your nonprofit’s eligibility for the Ad Grants depends on which country it is based in. Google has a list of eligibility requirements for nonprofits in each of the 50 countries where the Google for Nonprofits programme operates.
Let’s take a look at the eligibility requirements in the UK:
- Organisations must be registered with the charity regulator in England and Wales (Charity Commission), Northern Ireland (NICC) or Scotland (OSCR); or HMRC as charitable tax-exempt charities or churches.
- You must be based in the UK
- Have a compliant website with plenty of content
- You’ll need to have your charity number clearly visible on your website
If your nonprofit is a registered charity and has a charity number, you’re eligible to apply. Government entities or organisations, hospitals or healthcare organisations and schools, academic institutions or universities are not eligible.
Is your website ready to use Google Ad Grants?
Your organisation needs a website that complies with these requirements:
- Owned website: your organisation must own the website that’s going to be advertised.
- Mission-based: the website must clearly describe the organisation, mission, objectives and activities.
- User-experience: it must be practical, with clear navigation and calls to action. Drive users to perform an action on your website (donate, subscribe to the newsletter, contact you to volunteer…).
- The content should be unique and kept updated with new events and information.
- User-safety: avoid broken links and secure your website with HTTPS.
- Commercial activity: sales of products and services are allowed, but they can’t be the sole purpose of your website. Describe on your website how your organisation uses funds.
- Advertising on the site: the ads on your website must be relevant to your mission and unobtrusive.
3. Registering For The Google Ad Grants
Let’s start with a top-level view of the process. The Google Ad Grants is one of a range of offerings Google has for nonprofits via their Google for Nonprofits programme.
The application process consists of four main steps:
- Request a Google for Nonprofits account
- Wait for a response from Goodstack – Most requests will be reviewed in 2–14 working days.
- Activate Google for Nonprofits products – Once you receive an email from Goodstack, you’ll be able to set up your Google for Nonprofits account.
- Set up your Google Ad Grants account
To use the Ad Grants, your charity needs to be verified by Goodstack. They’ll be automatically contacted when you request a Google for Nonprofits account. They’ll check all the information related to your organisation to verify your status as a legally registered and active social benefit, nonprofit, and nongovernmental organisation.
The next and final step is to activate and create a Google Ads account that you can link to your organisation’s Google for Nonprofits account.
To set up your nonprofit organisation on Google for Nonprofits, you’ll need a Google account that you can use for this purpose.
We recommend using a Gmail account specific to the organisation (instead of a personal Gmail account) that can be easily accessed, even in the event of staff changes in the future (for example, a general admin or marketing email address).
Bear in mind that you’ll need to either use an email address that has a regularly monitored mailbox to keep up to date with emails from Google, or alternatively, you can set up mail forwarding to another email address to ensure you receive communications.
Why is this important? Well, we often encounter nonprofits where a staff member set up all the accounts and has since left, and logins have been lost. (For reference, if you’re in this situation, please see this helpful link to recover it: https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/1722005?hl=en-GB)
Go to accounts.google.com and either log in to your account or create a new one to use. Once you’ve done this, continue to the steps below to register with Google For Nonprofits:
- Click “Get Started”
- Sign in with your Google account that you want to use for the organisation’s account
- Follow the steps to register your organisation
- Wait for Goodstack to verify your account
- You can check the status of your registration by checking your account page https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/1614637
- Click on “Activate products” and select Google Ad Grants
- Fill in the Ad Grants Eligibility Form
- Submit your activation request
Once registered with Google For Nonprofits, you’ll be able to access a variety of free services for nonprofits. After your application for Google Ad Grants is approved, you will get an email to accept a payment profile and to accept a Google Ads account setup.
4. Setting up your Google Ads account
Use the same email address you’ve used to sign up for Google For Nonprofits. You’ll be able to invite additional users to the account after the Ad Grants has been activated. Follow the steps below to set up your account:
- Insert your website’s url, make sure your website is secure with HTTPS
- If your email address is linked to other Google products, like your Google Business Profile, link them in the second step.
- Add your organisation’s phone number.
- Link your GA4 (Google Analytics) account. If you don’t have an account, you can create it later using the same email address and you’ll be able to link the accounts through GA4.
Now, you can either continue the steps Google is suggesting to create your first campaign, or you can click “Skip” and create your campaign from scratch without Google’s help. We prefer this second option because it gives you more freedom to set up your campaign using a better structure, though it will take more time.
If you’re happy to follow Google’s guidance, continue with the original set up:
- Select the goals for your account, these are the events (conversions) you want to focus on. If your goal is getting Donations, you’ll want to track Purchases, if you want people to sign up as a Volunteer or to get in touch with you, you’ll need a Submit lead form event. Follow the steps to set it up, or click Skip and create the events later.
- Creating your first Search campaign. Follow the steps on the screen, but ensure you select accurate Location settings (focus on where your audience lives and the languages they speak).
- You’ll be prompted to create an Ad. Write good ad copy that accurately represents your organisation’s work. Choose a relevant landing page from your website and make sure you include your keywords as headlines.
- Set a Bid Strategy. We suggest starting with Maximise Conversions or Maximise Clicks. The Ad Grants has a maximum CPC (cost per click) of $2. If you use Manual CPC, you won’t be able to spend more than that per click, which might put your ads at a disadvantage compared to Paid Ads. But conversion-focused bidding allows you to go over the $2 cap.
- Set a budget. Your Ad Grants account won’t be able to spend more than $329 a day, a total of $10,000 per month.
If you’re doing your own independent set up, you’ll get maximum control over your account. To keep your account compliant, you’ll need to have:
- At least one active campaign that gets daily traffic
- Each campaign must have at least 1 ad group
- Each ad group must have at least 1 responsive search ad
- Ad groups need at least 1 keyword
- Single-word or overly generic keywords are not allowed
- Campaigns must have at least 2 sitelinks ad extensions
- Set up an active and accurate conversion tracking
- Track at least 1 conversion per month
There are other policies that your account must follow, but these are the ones to keep in mind when setting up your account.
You can visit Part 2 to learn how to create your Google Ads campaigns and how to optimise your account.
