How Do I Get A Google Ads Grant?

If you’re a charity or non-profit, you’ll likely be looking for ways to promote your solutions to donors, volunteers, users and other groups of interest.

And one of the most effective ways to do that is through Google. To get started you could set up a Google Ads account and start advertising immediately.

And another benefit is that you could apply for free advertising with Google by signing up for a grant. The grant will help you reach your audiences on a wide scale and achieve the goals that your organisation has set.

Google offers ad grants to charities and non-profits around the world and the amount is different from country to country. For UK based charities that is about £7000 per month and US based ones it is $10,000 per month.

To be eligible for a grant, your non-profit should be registered as a charitable organisation in one of the 51+ eligible countries that you can find out about on the website.

One of the benefits of this is that you get significantly more advertising spend than most small businesses spend.

That is a lot of money to spend for new campaigns and it is much more than what many new advertisers will spend. In fact, many businesses start with budgets as low as £500 per month, so this is significantly more budget spend than many receive.

However, there are some rules that you need to follow and maintain if you’re to be successful in getting a grant and maintaining it.

To get started, visit the Google Ad Grants website to apply.

According to Google, they have awarded over $10 billion in free advertising to over 115,000 non-profits across 51 countries (source: Google Ads Grants).

Here are some other benefits of getting a Google Ads grant that will fuel your non-profit’s mission:

1. Reach audiences at scale

A Google Ads grant will allow you to quickly reach a wide audience to promote your solutions. You won’t have to wait weeks or months to reach your audiences because you will have the resources behind you to do it on a large scale.

And this is important especially around important events when you need to reach many donors or volunteers or others.

 

2. Highly targeted ads

Google Ads helps you to create highly targeted ads that reach only people that are relevant to what you’re promoting.

This is much better than traditional forms of advertising like TV and radio where you reach many people that won’t be relevant to your requirements. And these are always more expensive.

 

3. Measurable solutions that deliver on goals

With Google Ads you can measure every dollar you spend in your campaigns and see what returns you’re getting, which is often difficult with other forms of advertising.

You will set up conversion tracking and you’ll be able to see how many sales or leads you’re getting and the amount you’ve made.

And you’ll have metrics like conversion rate and cost per conversion which show you how each of your ads, keywords, campaigns and so on are performing.

 

However, there are some ongoing requirements that your campaigns in Google Ads have to meet, so you can continue advertising without facing disapprovals or suspensions and these are:

1. No single-word keywords permitted

It’s not permitted to add and bid on single-word keywords under the Ad Grant programme. An example is bidding on a word like ‘shoes’, which is too broad. The keywords you select should have two or more words in them.

Single-word keywords often convert poorly and though they drive a lot of traffic, most of this is not relevant and not targeted and it will perform poorly.

So, if you have any, you will have to pause or remove them

However, your brand names are exempted from this rule and you can add them to your campaigns.

2. No overly generic keywords

Just because you are getting free advertising money does not mean you can add any and every keyword that you want.

All keywords you add should be relevant to your non-profit and the work that you’re doing. You can add a few generic keywords that are closely related but not too many.

The aim should be a good conversion rate for all your campaigns and that will ensure you meet the requirements and maintain your account.

3. No low-quality score keywords of 1 or 2

Poor quality scores are not permitted. So, if you have keywords that have quality scores of 1 or 2, you should take action to improve them. 10 is the highest score but anything above 5 is good.

You’ll need to work on factors that contribute to your scores, like expected click through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, if they are low.

One action you can take too is to pause or remove all poor-quality score keywords.

4. Maintain at least 5% click through rate each month

 

If your account fails to meet 5% click through rate (CTR) for two consecutive months, it will result in temporary account deactivation.

And when that happens you’ll need to fix the issues causing the low CTR and then submit an appeal.

To fix a deactivation or prevent one, make sure your ads are highly targeted to the search queries that they are appearing for.

And you could also pause any keywords with high impressions and low CTR.

This will help to improve your CTRs.

5. Must respond to programme survey

 

Google sends out an annual programme survey which all grantees must complete. This survey takes about 10 minutes to complete and asks questions about your organisation and how you use Ad Grants. Google uses this to improve your experience and improve the whole programme.

Conclusion

Need help setting up a Google Ads account for your non-profit organisation? I’m a Google Ads specialist and PPC consultant with many years’ experience in this sector. Contact me to discuss more.