1. What Is The Google Ad Grant?

The Google Ad Grant was started in 2003 as a way to help nonprofit organizations compete in digital marketing. For-profit businesses spend millions of dollars each year on paid advertising, allowing their links to appear in Google search results as sponsored links. While nonprofits are free to compete for these paid ads, many lack the resources to compete with for-profit businesses at any large scale. The Google Ad Grant allows nonprofits to compete with each other using house money. Each month, up to $10,000 is given to grantees depending on the way they set up their account. These funds are given automatically and do not signify success, making the accounting much simpler than your average grant. Bids are made automatically based on scripts and the popularity of certain search terms.

The Google Ad Grant ensures that your organization will appear with greater frequency than any organic search. By presenting a wider audience with your organization, you have the ability to drive traffic to your website. What you do with that traffic is a strategic decision made by your organization and can easily be a catalyst for long-term success.

The eligibility requirements for the Ad Grant are very simple. Any organization is eligible if the following conditions are met:

1. They are a registered 501(c)3 organization.
2. They are not a school, hospital, or government agency.

One of the great benefits of the Google Ad Grant is its scalability. It’s easy enough to acquire, and the funds never run out. So long as you remain compliant with Google’s minimum standards, you have access to the Grant forever. This way, even small organizations can devote a few hours every week and see great results. For larger organizations or those with a specific plan in mind, you can use the Google Ads infrastructure and data analytics to drastically improve the performance of your Ads account. This process of maintaining the Grant and tweaking it to achieve your goals is called Grant Management and is what we do best at Nonprofit Megaphone.

2. What The Grant Can Do

Nonprofits have tremendous flexibility in how they use their Ad Grant. Depending on their size, scope, mission, and resources, they can develop a strategy to use the Google Ad Grant to achieve their goals. While the details may differ between organizations, there are proven goals that the Google Ad Grant can be employed to accomplish.

Drive Traffic

The primary purpose of the Google Ad Grant is to drive traffic to your website. Successful use of the Grant will see your clicks, engagement, and conversion metrics increase. No matter what strategy you pursue, your website will be welcoming new users at a much higher rate. With this in mind, organizations can take advantage of increased traffic by mindfully tweaking their website. Having a well-designed, user friendly website will go a long way towards turning traffic into value.

Raise Awareness

Many nonprofits use the Google Ad Grant to promote their organization, programs, or events. Whether it be an online webinar, fundraising drive, or gala, the Google Grant can be used to target a specific audience and make them aware. Each Google Ad is associated with specific keywords that determine whether the ad is shown. With enough time and research, your organization can create a targeted ad campaign, running ads on all of the high-volume keywords relevant to your event or program. In addition, geo-targeting allows you to only target users in a specific area. If your organization only serves a single state or region, geo-targeting ensures that only those physically capable of accessing your organization are made aware of it.

Increase Fundraising

Increased traffic from the Google Grant will increase overall engagement with your website. Not only can it make visitors aware of fundraising events, but good web content can entice visitors to donate or engage in other fundraising activities digitally. We encourage our clients to consider designing aspects of their websites to the benefit of their Google Grant. This synergy helps to ensure that new visitors find what they are looking for on your site and are drawn into your organization and its mission. Designing specific donation pages relative to your Google Ads is a great way to diversify your appeals and increase overall success.

Achieve Your Goals

In addition to the previous goals, the Google Ad Grant has a role to play in nearly any endeavor your organization pursues. Due to the flexibility and scalability of the Grant, good management can result in progress towards short and long-term goals at the same time. Use the Grant to drive traffic to events or web content. While you do that, you’re cultivating supporters and learning more about the demographics of your audience. The data generated by the Grant is informative, giving you an empirical advantage as you plan your long-term goals.

The degree to which your Google Ad Grant is successful depends on the time, labor, and research your organization commits to it. This is why many nonprofits choose to outsource their grant management to agencies like ours. However, with enough diligence and time, even a small grant management team at your nonprofit can learn how to maximize success with the Google Ad Grant.

At Nonprofit Megaphone, our mission is to help nonprofits enhance their capacities and share their mission with the world. We’re experts in the Google Ad Grant, a program available to most nonprofits that give them an affordable way to compete for digital marketing space.

The Google Ad Grant can benefit nonprofit organizations of any size, mission, or scope. The Grant helps your organization grow its audience, increase engagement with supporters, and generate data on your website and its users. Normally, this kind of service would be extraordinarily expensive, requiring a huge risk in order to profit from the investment. However, with the low costs of the Google Ad Grant, eligible nonprofits can jumpstart their digital marketing efforts. Get in touch to learn more about how to use the Google Grant to amplify your reach!