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Google Ad Grants: the perfect boost for nonprofit fundraising

Imagine if Google gave you money every month to use its advertising services. That’s Google Ad Grants for your nonprofit fundraising campaign. Google has set up a program to help nonprofit organizations (NPOs), including social economy enterprises and cooperatives, to promote their services on the web by offering them a monthly budget of about $ 10,000 US. After you clear the eligibility criteria set in place by Google, you will be able to promote your organization much more easily.

To help make Google your ally and raise awareness of your cause, we look at  the details of the Google’s grant program, how to apply, how it works, and what are its benefits for nonprofit fundraising campaigns.  

First and foremost, it’s important to understand what paid advertising is with Google Adwords. An Adwords campaign can drive traffic to your website from the Google search engine. That is, when a user searches for a keyword related to your industry, your ads may show up in the first search results. Once the user clicks on one of your ads, he goes to your website and, from there, he can perform various actions, such as contacting the company, filling out a form, making an online purchase, etc. .

The advertiser, in this case your organization, buys keywords that will allow it to beat its competitors in the online search.

For example, for an organization that supports children with Autism, the words used could be: “autism association”, “autism help”, “autism donation”, etc. These keywords will trigger an ad during a search.

Here is an example of an advertisement on Google:

The ad position on Google search result (first page or the tenth result page) will depend on various factors, including the amount of the auction and the competition. Billing is done when someone clicks on an ad.

How does the Google Ad Grants program work?

The way Google Ad Grants works is essentially the same as traditional advertising in Google Adwords when it comes to campaign creation and management.

Ads must be fully textual, without images or video. These will be displayed in Google’s search results under paid ads by companies. All campaigns will be targeted by keywords with a maximum cost per click of approximately $ 2. Each advertiser manages their own campaigns.

Who is eligible?
Certain criteria must be respected to be eligible for this grant from Google.

Your organization must

  • Be recognized by the IRS as tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations formed for charitable, educational, religious, literary, scientific, or other tax-exempt purposes.
  • Fiscally sponsored organizations are not eligible for Google for Nonprofits.
  • Organizations, such as churches, that are automatically considered tax-exempt under group exemption must still obtain recognition of 501(c)(3) tax exemption from the IRS to qualify for the Google for Nonprofits program.
  • Organizations must be validated by TechSoup.

Once qualified, the organization must also ensure that eligibility is maintained by following certain policies:

1. At the website level:

The message must be relevant and consistent with the mission of the organization;
You must own your website;
Your site must not contain any advertising space (such as AdSense or affiliate links);
Website must be of high quality with clear mention of your mission and with functional links;
Content must have enough information to help the user understand critical information.

2. At the level of the campaigns:

Your account must be active at least once a month and have active campaigns every 90 days;
There should not be too generic keywords, brand names other than the name of your organization and one-word keywords;
The keywords must be related to your domain;
The quality level of the keywords must be greater than or equal to 2;
The clickthrough rate must be greater than or equal to 5% each month.

What are the advantages?
NPOs, social economy enterprises and cooperatives often have little chance of investing in online advertising. Google Ad Grants comes to answer this problem thanks to its program. The latter offers a great way to get visibility at a reduced cost.

Collecting donations, recruiting volunteers and raising public awareness of a cause are just some of the great benefits of using this service. It will be easier for your organization to make itself known.

Google Ads are also very advantageous at a specific moment, such as during a fundraising campaign. Online advertisements will support other visibility actions issued by the organization.

You will be able to share your message with the community or on a larger scale, without spending a penny of your pocket – or very little!

Need support?
Although there is an automated campaign management service by Google, it is beneficial to manage your own campaigns. Knowledge of running advertising campaigns are needed. You could also connect with GiveCentral experts to help you with your nonprofit fundraising.

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Last modified: April 17, 2019

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