6 Wins for Nonprofits using Google Ad Grants

With so many pressing global problems to solve, it’s important for charities and nonprofits to be seen, and to get their messaging in front of the right people

Whether you’re in fundraising mode, recruiting volunteers, or seeking to provide education about your cause — coming up at the top of search engines can help you spread the word and achieve your objectives.

What a lot of charities and third sector companies don’t know is that Google offers a pretty generous Google Ads Grants program that they could be taking advantage of, with some pretty hefty monthly grants available for free advertising.

What are Google Ad Grants?

Google Ad Grants allow nonprofits the possibility to advertise freely on Google. Once you’re qualified, eligible charities get up to $10,000 (£7,500) in grants per month to spend on their Google PPC advertising.

Whether your charity or nonprofit is big, or small — as long as it meets Google’s criteria, you can apply for a grant. Click here for our guide on how to do just that.

Why Should Your Nonprofit Use Google AdWords?

With a $10,000/month advertising budget that costs you nothing — these grants offer a  huge opportunity to grow your influence, and advance your mission.

A $10,000/month budget works out to a whole lot of visibility, especially considering you’re only paying for each click on your advert.

You’ll now have the budget to design and implement a good old-fashioned donation ad campaign — which could be really profitable for your organisation with a lot less door knocking, networking, and event organisation compared to a traditional donation drive.

There are also a multitude of objectives for nonprofits using these Ad Grants. You can advertise speaking opportunities, boost social media engagement, attract volunteers, or subscribers to your mailing list. 

You can even use these grants for directly advertising your nonprofit’s products and merchandise, as long as the proceeds are going to your cause.

These are our 6 wins for charities and nonprofits using Google Ad Grants:

1. Get to the top for your branded keywords

Branded keywords are pretty essential for getting to the top of Google’s search result page — and these are the keywords to do with your organisation’s name and brand. When users look for your nonprofit by name, you want to appear right at the top, and bidding on your branded keywords will help you do this.

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2. Get clever with your keywords

With the comfortable budget afforded by a Google Ad Grant, you can experiment with the keywords that would be most effective for your goals and objectives, and try out different keywords to drive users to your website.

3. Choose your landing pages

Google may choose to send most visitors users to your homepages, but with the help of Ad Grants, you can send them to the specific pages on your website that are even better at converting.

4. Clarify your message

Normally, Google only pulls up your page’s meta description underneath the search result. With Google Ad Grants, you can write great copy for your text ads to make sure you’re getting the most powerful message across on the search engine page, alongside the action you want users to take.

5. Cosy up with your competitors by bidding on their keywords

It is standard practice to bid on the same keywords as your competitors, and can indeed help to ensure you’re staying visible in the space you share. Bidding on the branded keywords of your competitors is possible with Google Ad Grants, and helps you show up parallel to their listings.

6. Reach a wider audience

Use your Google Ads Grant budget to expand your reach by using broader keywords. Rather than focusing your allocation on only the most relevant search keywords, you can cast a wider net with your Google Ad Grant budget.

That’s all folks.

For eligible nonprofits, Google Ad Grants certainly help to significantly increase your online exposure, and connect with a wider audience. The fact that this budget is available to you month to month also offers a huge amount of help when it comes to consistency and planning.

So if you’re a nonprofit hoping to be found more on search engines, find out whether you are eligible for a Google Ad Grant as a matter of marketing priority.

Before you go!

We help brands with things like Google Ad Grants. Giving a prominent voice to the unsaid, the hidden and the marginalised, we use our creativity and compassion make sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time. We help clients connect with audiences in a meaningful way that challenges perspectives and changes behaviour. To see more of our purpose led campaigns, and brands we’ve created check out our project page, or just holla us at the contact page.

A full list of our services can be found here.

If you’re a charity or work in the third section why not download our free ‘‘Top 5 Freebies for Charities and NonProfits’, which covers website, branding and video creation, at the link.