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Utilising Google Ad Grants for Non-Profits & Charities

by Billie Karadimas | 25.03.2022

Google Support For Non Profits & Charities

Google offers a free program called Google for Non-Profits, which provides eligible non-profits and charities access to products and services by Google that help them solve organisational problems like finding donors and volunteers, fundraising in more ways online, working more efficiently, and getting supporters and engagers to take action.

What Does Google For Non-Profits Provide?

Guide to Google Ad Grants

The Google Ad Grant provides free Google Ads money for select non-profits. If eligible, non-profits can receive $10,000 USD of in-kind advertising from Google each month, to be used to create successful search campaigns that promote their missions and initiatives. With a Google Ad Grant account, you can create text ads which are displayed on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages. This is useful in attracting donors, promoting events, raising awareness, providing information, or raising funds for campaigns and projects.

Eligibility & Requirements

To be eligible for a Google Ad Grant, your organisation must:

Account Compliance

The Google Ad Grant Compliance Guide sets out the rules that need to be followed for Ad Grant accounts to remain active and avoid suspension. The main requirements for compliance can be divided into performance, account structure, keywords, and activity.

Performance

Structure

Keywords

Activity

How to set up a Google Ad Grant Account?

Once you’ve established your eligibility, applying for and setting up a Google Ad Grant account as a non-profit or charitable organisation is fairly simple and straightforward:

1.   Register your non-profit with TechSoup and get a validation token (TechSoup partners with Google to provide technical support and tools to non-profits at a discounted rate).

2.   Register for Google for Non-profits, agree to the non-discrimination statements, insert your validation token and fill out the required contact and organisational information.

3.   Once you’ve been accepted as a Google Non-profit, apply for Google Ad Grants. This is a multistep process which involves signing into your Google Non-Profits account, clicking activate under Google Ad Grants, filling out the eligibility form, clicking activate again after completing the assessment and clicking activate one last time to submit your account for review.

4.   Once Google reviews your account, they will respond with further instructions within 3 days.

5.   Once you have Google’s approval, make sure to set up your grant account correctly.

Best practices For Google Ad Grant Management

Choose Relevant Keywords

To help your organisation reach the right audience, make sure to use keywords, word combinations or phrases that are relevant to your organisation’s products or services. Its best practice to ensure keywords are formatted correctly, and you may want to include enough so that your ads reach people who are searching in varying ways. (Tip: Use Google’s keyword planner tool to discover new keywords with a high search volume).

Write Effective Ad Copy

Stimulate your audience to take action by creating good ad copy that references your keywords, highlights your benefit and includes a compelling call to action. It’s good practice to continue testing different variations of ad copy, to see what appeals to your audience.

Embrace Automated Rules

Managing a Google Ad Grant Account can be incredibly time-consuming with so many requirements for compliance. Setting automated rules is a way to semi-automate your account, which can help ease the pressure of campaign management and is a way to ensure your account isn’t automatically suspended. For example, we recommend setting an automated rule to pause all keywords that have a 5% CTR or less, to avoid further issues.

Mistakes to avoid When Managing A Google Ad Grant

Relying On Broad Terms

It’s common for non-profits to want to use broad, catch-all terms like “charity” or “donation” to ensure they meet the monthly spend requirement. While broad match keywords will bring you a lot of impressions and clicks, opt for some exact or phrase match keywords, or long-tail keywords that are more specific. This will allow you to attract more relevant and high-quality traffic to your website and remain competitive.

Low Quality Landing Pages

The user journey doesn’t end once a searcher clicks on your ad, so make sure your landing pages deliver on what your ads promise. Ensure the information and objective of your landing page are aligned with the keyword(s) and ad copy, and that your landing pages load fast, are functional and contain relevant content. Irrelevant landing pages can also make your quality score suffer, which puts you at risk for your ad grant account being suspended.

Forgetting To Optmise

Once you’ve finished setting up your account, you’ll need to continue making frequent optimisations and regularly tracking results. Not only is optimising your account important when trying to grow your organisation and get more out of your spend, it’s also necessary as Google requires non-profits to make changes to their grant account every 90 days. While it can take a lot of time to make sure your account is as optimised as it can be, there are agencies with experience managing Google Ad Grant accounts that can support you.

How Tug Helps Non-Profits Manage Their Grant Accounts

The PPC team at Tug are currently running successful Google Ad Grant accounts for our clients. Notably, we helped the Butterfly Foundation achieve the highest audience engagement out of seven not-for-profits taking part in the National Mental Health Commissions #ChatStarter campaign. We have extensive experience setting up Google Ad Grant accounts, and always ensure they remain compliant and continuously optimised.

FAQ – Google Ad Grants for Non- Profits & Charities

What is the Google Ad Grant For Non-Profits?

The Google Ad Grant provides eligible non-profits and charities with $10,000 USD worth of free advertising money to spend on Google Ads, to support their missions and initiatives.

Is Google Ad Grants free for non-profits & charities?

Yes, the Google Ad Grant is free for eligible non-profits and charities, permitted the account meets Google’s requirements and guidelines for compliance.

How do I use the Google Ad Grant?

Depending on the goals of your non-profit, there are many ways to use your Google Grant. You can use it to encourage donations, attract more website visitors, advocate about issues important to your organisation, recruit volunteers, inform your supporters about important programs, fundraise online or encourage actions from your engagers like making donations.

How do I access my Google Ad Grant account?

When you receive an email from Google that your activation has been approved, you can follow the instructions included in the email to access your account and finish setting up. The involved steps include accepting the email invitation to a new Google Ads account, accepting the email invitation to the Google Payments billing profile, signing back into your Google Ads account and following the prompts to accept the Terms and Conditions.

Will Tug Agency help me set up my Google Ads Grants account?

Yes, we love helping non-profits! At Tug, our PPC team has extensive experience setting up Grant accounts for non-profits and charitable organisations.

How do I contact Tug to set up my Google Ads Grants Account?

If you’re a non-profit and would like Tug’s help setting up a Google Ad Grant account, contact us at hellosydney@tugagency.com, and we’d be more than happy to help you out!