Google Adwords Grant Guide

Are you looking to advertise your nonprofit organization for free? If so, Google offers an AdWords grant for qualified nonprofit businesses which provides you with $10,000 a month to spend on Google AdWords.  You can drive extra traffic to your site with this kind of grant and strengthen your organization’s impact on the world without eating up a huge chunk of your budget.

Find out if your company is eligible for the AdWords grant and take the following steps to apply.

Sign up for a Google Nonprofit account:

To sign up for a Google Nonprofit grant account you need to make sure your company is eligible. To be eligible, your company must be a nonprofit and hold a current valid charity status within your country.  Once you find out your company is eligible, you can fill out the online application. The applications are typically reviewed within 10 days.  There are a few cases where additional information may be asked for before a decision is made.

Set up AdWords Account:

Now that you are partnered with Google, you need to set up your AdWords account to be eligible for the Google AdWords grant. There are two options when you set up AdWords.

The first option is to set up AdWords Express.  AdWords Express is a simplified version of AdWords and it does not give you as much control over the account as the full account does.

The second option is to set up a full account, this will take more time but you will see better results and have more control over the account. During set up of your account you want to make sure to set up a grants account and not a standard account.  In order to make sure you are doing that you need to skip the billing step.  You do not want to put in any credit card information.  If you put that information in then it will become a standard account and not a grants account.

Apply For Google AdWords Grant Program:

Once you have your AdWords account set up you will need to create your first campaign. If you have never created a campaign before don’t worry, Google has step by step directions on how to set up your fist nonprofit campaign.  Once the first campaign is created, you can submit your account for review.  That is when Google will review your account and campaign to make sure you align with the nonprofit guidelines.  It can take up to 30 days for an account to be approved.  Keep checking back because often times, accounts get approved well before the 30 day deadline.

Running Your Google AdWords Grant Campaigns:

Now that your account is up, running and approved by Google there are a few rules that need to be followed in the monthly management of the account.

• First, you are allowed $10,000 a month in spend, which equals $329 of spend per day. The monthly budget of $10,000 does not role over month to month.
• Second, the maximum you can spend per click is $2.00.  As you start running your campaigns and collecting data, you will be able to see which keywords you should be focusing on.
• Third, you can only run text ads that will appear on Google’s search results page.  AdWords does provide other types of advertising throughout their network such ad display and video advertising. For the AdWords grant campaigns, though you will only be allowed to advertise on the search network.

To ensure that you are following Google’s AdWords Grant guidelines make sure you do the following:

• Set up goals in Google Analytics so that you can track the impact AdWords is actually having on your site
• Log into your AdWords account monthly and make any appropriate changes
• Make sure with your ads you are only sending traffic to your own website
• Once a year fill out the Google survey talking about how the Google Grant program has changed your business

A few last tips to get the most out of your AdWords grant account:

• Spend time optimizing your account. This is free advertising make the most of it.
• The monthly grant does not roll over every month, so make sure you spend it all every month so you don’t lose any money.
• Use all the free tools Google provides within AdWords, such as the keyword planner, ad extensions, and conversion tracking.

These Google AdWords grants are an incredible opportunity that nonprofit organizations should be taking advantage of. These grants are helping to spread the important messages of deserving nonprofits and are ultimately helping to better the world.

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