Google AdWords Grants for Nonprofits Explained in Under 500 Words
If you’re just hearing about Google AdWords Grants for Nonprofits now, that’s a shame since this program has been benefiting nonprofits for the last fifteen years. However, it’s not too late. Google is still accepting applicants.
Essentially, Google AdWords Grants is the nonprofit version of AdWords, which is the world’s most popular advertising platform. The Google AdWords Grants version has fewer features and additional compliance rules. However, Google gives a nonprofit $120,000 a year to spend.
If you intend to apply on your own, make sure you understand the compliance rules first. You can download the 2018 compliance guide below. This is because you must create a complete and compliant campaign as part of your submission for google grants in order to be approved.
$329 a Day
Every day, Google puts $329 into your account’s budget. You can then spend that money on clickable advertisements in Google’s search engine that take people to your nonprofit’s website. Once they’re on your website, they’ll buy things, sign up to volunteer, sign up for your newsletter, and more. By having these advertisements at the top, your nonprofit leapfrogs your competitors who may be larger, more relevant, or physically closer to the person doing the search.
This is because your advertisement is showing above the non-advertisement results. Your nonprofit can easily go from the 100th website listed to the first website listed because of Google Grants.
Google documents what you spend in a day as an in-kind donation from Google to your nonprofit. Google logs this for a tax benefit. The value that Google assigns to these clicks is a very accurate assessment because it is based on a free-market bidding system of many advertisers trying to buy clicks for those searches.
Whatever you don’t use from that $329 does not roll over. You do not get to use that money later to get traffic to your website. You and Google do not get to log unused money as an in-kind donation. If your nonprofit is not enrolled today, you spent $0 of what you could have.
If you want to see a video that explains how you can get and use this, fill out the form to access the video overview. Or continue with the written summary by scrolling.
35,000 Nonprofits Already Enrolled
Over 35,000 nonprofits are enrolled today and are using this free money. Over the life of the program, Google has given over $8 Billion to these nonprofits worldwide. For 2017, in the U.S. alone, Google gave $692.92 million.
You likely put a lot of time, money, and effort into designing your nonprofit’s website, but what have you been doing to make sure it can be found by the right people? You do not want your website to be like Isle de Muerta from Pirates of the Caribbean: found only by those who already know where it is.
Apply Soon
You can’t change the past, but every day you delay in applying is $329 that you can’t get back. Call or message me to learn more about how you can apply.
Michael Rasko is a nonprofit marketing consultant who specializes in Google Grants. If you work with or for a nonprofit who is interested in starting or improving a Google Grants account, contact him to learn more.