What is Google Ad Grants?
Google Ad Grants (https://www.google.com/grants/) is designed to help nonprofit organizations raise awareness, create brand recognition, and increase donations and fundraising activities. Google wants to help nonprofits meet the challenges of reaching out to their donors, supporters, volunteers and other stakeholders.
Michelle Hurtado, Global Head of Ad Grants, says: “We started the Ad Grants program so that resource-strapped nonprofits could have good access to share their information on Google.com.”
I know what you’re thinking: While this program seems attractive, nonprofits are not the only resource-strapped, but they have limited staff members and those staff members have a lot on their plate. They have neither the time nor the necessary skills and experience to run Google Ad Grants campaigns.
Google has addressed this concern in collaboration with universities, as Michelle Hurtado explains: “We partner with universities to offer a program for students learning online marketing to volunteer with Ad Grantees through the Google Ad Grants Online Marketing Challenge.”
51,000 nonprofits received Google Ad Grants in 2019. Nonprofit.how wants to connect with those nonprofits that are under a lot of pressure and help them utilize this incredible opportunity provided by Google.
Are Google Ads free for nonprofits?
Yes! It may be hard to believe, but Google is committed to empowering and supporting any nonprofit that is in compliance with Google’s code of conduct. As a Google Ad Grantee, your nonprofit organization receives $120,000 to spend on the Google Ads platform. You spend $10,000 of the grant per month, with a minimum ad bidding price of $2 per click. Ad Grants may only be used on the Google Search Engine, i.e., not on YouTube or any other Google-owned platform.
Who is eligible to receive Ad Grants?
- Any valid charitable organization certified by the appropriate agency for the country in which you operate. In the United States, your organization’s status must be 501(c)(3). Philanthropic extensions of educational institutions are also eligible.
- Google’s nondiscrimination certifications and valid use of donation receipts requirement must be met by your organization.
- You also need a website that complies with Google’s Ad Grants website policy
- The Ad Grants pre-qualification process concludes with your organization’s acceptance by Google for Nonprofits program.
What is TechSoup? Do I need a TechSoup account to apply for Google Ad Grants?
TechSoup (https://techsoup.org) is a global organization that helps nonprofits find suitable technological solutions at discounted prices. TechSoup has a wide range of technology product offerings, including Adobe products, Google G-Suite products, Google Free Ad Grants, Intuit, Microsoft Office, SAP, Cisco, Docusign, Tableau, Amazon Web Services, and refurbished computers and laptops.
Google encourages nonprofits to register with TechSoup. With a TechSoup account, it is much easier to verify a nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) tax status. Therefore, we recommend starting here: https://www.techsoup.org/joining-techsoup/registration. After the validation process is completed, TechSoup will forward your information to Google for Nonprofits, where you will begin Google’s registration process. (https://www.techsoup.org/google-for-nonprofits)
How do I apply for Google Ad Grants?
- Register for a TechSoup account and get approved as a nonprofit organization; now you can have access to Google G-Suite and apply for Ad Grants.
- Make sure that your organization meets the eligibility requirements for the Google Nonprofits program.
- Agree to Google Nonprofits’ Additional Terms of Service (https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/9004493?hl=en)
- Apply to the Google Nonprofits Program.
- After you are accepted into the program, submit your eligibility form on the Google Grants activation page. Next, go back to your Google Nonprofits account and affirm that you’ve submitted your form.
- Finally, forward your activation for a review by the Google Ad Grants team. They will update your status as soon as possible.
What are the Google Ads Bidding Strategies? Which bidding type is right for my nonprofit?
Even before designing your website and writing your content, you need to specify what you want your organization’s website to accomplish. Your goals may include:
- Increasing website traffic
- Increasing donations
- Selling merchandise
- Gaining more email subscribers
- Increasing membership in your organization
Each of these metrics demands a different bidding strategy as you implement your Google Ad Grant account.
How can I run Google Ad campaigns, if there is no experienced staff member or volunteer at my nonprofit?
Google is aware of how hard it is for a nonprofit to run its ads. In order to ease the pain, Google offers Google Ad Academy to get you equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to run your ads. There are also many other resources — videos, events, blog posts, and community discussions — to help you understand the process.
- Help Center: Find useful information on conducting successful Google Ads campaigns using Automated Bidding
- Community Forums: Nonprofit Google Ads users learn from each other by posting questions and receiving answers. ()
- Google for Nonprofits YouTube Channel: Watch educational videos on various topics to help you run a profitable ad campaign.
- Telephone Support: Call 1-866-2GOOGLE (1-866-246-6453) for support and campaign optimization tips.
- Google Ad Grants Certified Professionals Community: If you need professional support for Google Ads, tap into this network of agencies, consultants and trainers certified by Google who can help you with campaign creation, training and management.
What is the Bid limit for my Ad Grant Ads?
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Google strongly urges nonprofits to use the “Maximize Conversion Values” bid strategy. This bidding type is best for when you are tracking donations, purchases or membership fees through your website.
Other bidding strategies, such as Target Cost Per Action (Target CPA) or Target Return over Investment (Target ROAS), are more advanced options that should be applied by an experienced Google Ads Professional.
How can I assess how my Google Ads are doing?
The Google Ads platform supports users with reports for assessing their conversions. Conversion can be defined as the rate of the preferred actions taken as a result of a Google Ads campaign. Preferred actions include a donation, a sale, membership fee, a subscription or newsletter signup. Along with Google Ads reports, Google Analytics is also free to use. If you want to learn about Google Analytics’ free tools, please follow this link
Should I use Automated Bidding with Google Ad Grants?
If you are an advertiser with limited experience creating Google Ads, Google’s Automated Bidding strategy can help you establish your goals and maximize your results. Over time, using “machine learning,” Google Ads gets very smart about bidding prices by analyzing the historical data, trends, and real-time bidding.
If you want to increase the number of visitors to your site and get more sales, donations, and membership fees while making the most of your Google Ad Grant budget, learn more about Automated Bidding here
How do I Maximize my Conversion Values?
For Google Ad campaigns using Automated Bidding strategies, Google will optimize your bid prices based on real-time data, by assessing your contextual signals and historical information about your campaign. By finding the best possible auction bidding price, Google helps you achieve the maximum number of conversions (e.g., sales, donations, or membership fees). For more information, please click on this link:
What is Conversion Tracking? Do I need it?
Wherever you go, whatever you do, you need to keep track of what’s going on with your ad campaigns. This is crucial to your ability to make informed decisions. So, how do you measure the performance of your Google Ad Grant campaigns? Simply by setting up Conversion Tracking for your website.
Conversion Tracking shows you the performance of your campaign: how many ad clicks lead to valuable customer actions such as donations, sales, newsletter memberships, membership fees, and signups.
If you don’t have a webmaster or web developer in your organization, find a professional who can help you in setting up your Conversion Tracking. Please check out Google Ads Help.
What is Ad Quality Score?
Google always tries to find ways to understand your ads’ estimated quality so that the ads will be positioned correctly (https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6167118). Quality Score is one of the ways that Google takes into account the expected click-through rate (CTR), the relevancy of the ad to the keywords, and the landing page experience for users. Google calculates an aggregate estimation of all those values and scales them between 1-10 (where 10 is the highest score). In order to prevent any confusion, Ad Quality Score and Ad Rank are not the same thing.
What is Ad Rank?
Ad Rank is a measure to fix upon your position in Google Ads, as well as to determine whether your ads will be displayed at all.
Ad Rank is derived from:
- Your bid amount
- Ad quality at the time of the auction
- The competitiveness at the time of the auction
- The context of the user’s search, including
- Search intent (navigational, informational or transactional)
- Geo location
- Time of search
- Device
- Other ads and search results
- Other user signals and attributes
- Ad extensions and ad formats being used
Ad Rank is going to be adjusted each time your ad is qualified to appear in an auction. Therefore, your Ad Rank can shift with each auction depending on how much the conditions listed above have changed.
For things you should know about Ads Quality please click the link here
How to successfully administer Google’s Free Advertising Grants?
- Be in compliance with Google’s web policies and best practices. An on-demand report created by Google will reveal any compliance issues you may have.
- Monitor weekly emails from Google, which may include important notices. Make sure that these emails don’t end up in your spam folder by ensuring that Google has your correct email address.
- Free Advertising Grants are only usable on the Google Search Engine. They are not valid for YouTube or any other Google-owned platform.
- Spend your $10,000 monthly budget on Pay Per Click Campaigns on Google Search.
- Be aware that you cannot use one-word keywords for your advertising.
- Invest in a structurally well-designed website that is search engine and user friendly.
- Increase the quality of the content that you’re directing your visitors to. Also, keep high quality standards for all of the website content.
- Ensure that each page of your website has a “call to action” that is measurable and tied to a goal.
- Set goals and measure them periodically to see how your ads are performing. Go beyond the goal of simply increasing traffic to your site; focus instead on success metrics such as how many visitors converted to donors or volunteers.
Don’t expect instant success. Periodically check your metrics, analyze them and improve your content or the usability of your website.
- The more clicks and interactions you have on your site, the higher you appear on Search Engine Page Results (SERPs)
- You can also run paid ad campaigns, which will reinforce your branding and messaging along with your Google Free Advertising Grant.
- Test different versions of your ads to discover which ones bring more clicks.
- Which member of your team can help you get the best outcome for your Ad Grant? Dedicate that person to work your Google Ad campaign. Have them get trained by Google Academy for Ads , YouTube Videos , Virtual and Onsite events, as well as Google’s guides.
How to maintain eligibility for Ad Grants and not get suspended by Google?
- All ads must direct to the same URL address listed in the registered account
- Visit your account at least once a month. Otherwise, Google may pause your account without any further notice.
- Create ads and products that are directly related to the mission of your nonprofit.
- Do not send the users forwarded by your ads to other sites.
- Financial products or offers cannot be delivered through your nonprofit website.
- Do not request large sums of money or large physical items such as cars, boats or property donations.
- You may not publish Google Adsense Ads or create affiliate links on your website.
