Google Ad Grants for charities – Everything you need to know

4 June 2021  |  Alex Cavalli

No charity would turn down over £7,000 per month in free donations, would they?

That’s effectively what Google are offering registered charities with Google Ad Grants, part of their Google for Nonprofits programme. In terms of traffic, this translates into an average of 15,000 extra visitors per month.

With 84% of recipients happy to recommend the scheme and 46% naming it as one of their top three sources of income, Google Ad Grants are definitely worth considering adding to your charity’s digital marketing strategy.

This guide will take you through everything you need to access the funds, including:

• What the Google Ad Grants scheme offers
• Determining whether your charity is eligible
• How to apply
• How to stay compliant
• How to optimise performance of your ads

What’s the deal with Google Ad Grants?

Google Ad Grants is one of several benefits the company has made available through its Google for Nonprofits programme. It provides $10,000 (currently just over £7,000) in free advertising credit. Ad campaigns run on the same Google Ads platform that current users will be familiar with and appear on the Google Search Network (but not the Google Display Network).

Google will not ask your charity to provide any additional monetary contribution and there are no hidden ‘catches’. However, charities do need to meet Google’s eligibility criteria and follow a few additional rules to stay compliant with the scheme.

If you are interested in taking advantage of this opportunity (and who wouldn’t be?) your first step is to determine whether your charity is eligible for Google for Nonprofits.

Assessing eligibility

Checking eligibility should be a relatively straightforward task. In most cases, if you are a UK charity with a registered charity number from the Charity Commission, OSCR (Scotland) or The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland you will be accepted. If you are not yet registered with the Charity Commission, you can do this online.

HMRC-exempt charities and churches are also eligible but charities linked to hospitals, universities or the government are not.

You will also need to agree to some standard Ts and Cs and register with Google’s local technology partner. This is currently Charity Digital and you can register during the Google for Nonprofits application process.

The application process

The Google for Nonprofits application process is easy to navigate. Simply go to https://www.google.com/nonprofits/, click ‘Get Started’ and follow the prompts.

Google will ask you about the headcount of your charity and your advertising budget but this is only for their internal reports. You won’t be refused based on the size or wealth of your charity. As explained above, you will be connected to Google’s local technology partner to complete your application.

Once you have signed up and been approved for Google for Nonprofits, you should find a Google Ad Grants activation page in your account which is linked to an eligibility form. Submit the form, return to your Google for Nonprofits account and confirm you have done so.

The final step is to submit your activation request and wait for Google to get back to you to confirm activation.

How to stay compliant with Google Ad Grants

In order to keep Google happy, you will need to ensure your ad campaigns tick the following boxes:

• Only one domain per account
• Your ads must match the purpose of your website
• Ads must not link to real estate, vehicles or financial products
• Ads must not link to pages which contain mostly links to other sites
• 100% of proceeds from your ads must go to your charity
• You must actively maintain your account (by logging in monthly and making at least one change every 90 days)
• You must always be running at least two ad groups and two ads (see below for our tip on managing this)
• Your click through rate (CTR) should average out at 5% or more across your account
• You should not use single word keywords in your ad targeting
• You should remove any keywords with a Quality Score of two or below

At first glance, the rules for compliance with the Google Ad Grants programme may seem daunting but they are actually pretty easy to stick to. Even if you do fall foul of them, you will most likely receive an email notification telling you that your ads will be paused until you sort things out. Google are not in the business of booting charities out of their programme unless there is a clear attempt to flout the rules.

Organising your ad campaigns

We recommend spending time up front structuring your ad campaigns to make compliance easier to manage and monitor. A great tip is to match your ad campaigns and ad groups to your website’s structure.

A Google Ads campaign is organised into a three level hierarchy. At the top is your Google Ads account. Beneath this you have one or more campaigns. Within each campaign, you set up one or more ad groups of one or more ads.

Here’s an example:

A charity with three clear user journeys might have three buttons or menu items for visitors to donate, volunteer or fundraise. By creating three separate ad campaigns, you can reflect that structure.

You could then use different ad groups within each campaign to appeal to different audiences. For example, within your donations campaign, you might create one ad group for ads that appeal to young people and another for ads you want to reach older donors.

As long as you are running at least two ads in two different ad groups, you can tick that box on the compliance checklist.

This is a smart, simple and beautiful way to run any Google Ads campaign (three qualities we love at Eyes Down!). It will also help you to spot those ads, ad groups and campaigns that need attention to ensure you remain compliant with Google Ad Grants.

A certain understanding of Google’s terminology is needed and we certainly recommend having a Google Ads professional help you to setup the account. A small investment in their time to get the account correctly structured could result in a significant improvement in traffic, click-through rate and ultimately supporter engagement/revenue. Please ask us if you’d like help on this front.

The anatomy of an effective ad

What does a great ad look like? In order to maximise click through rate, your ads should include several key elements.

A strong headline

Your headline should attract attention and explain clearly what you are looking for.

A logical path

Rather than direct traffic to your home page, it is often more effective to create a specific landing page for each ad campaign. This will give the user a better experience and improve the Quality Score of your ad. Make sure the url (page link) is meaningful and not too long (e.g. yourcharity.com/donate).

Your phone number

Including a phone number unlocks the click to call function on mobile devices which is a great way to boost CTR.

Call outs

Include key benefits and special offers here.

Sitelink extensions

These are the sub-links that appear on some Google Ads. Making use of the sitelink extensions feature when creating your ad is recommended by Google as it is linked to improved CTR. Keep your link text short and clear.

If you are promoting an event or a physical location (e.g. a charity shop), you should also include your address and opening hours in the ad.

Advanced ad optimisation

If you are an experienced Google Ads user (or you are up for a challenge), you can set up automatic rules to help optimise your ads while keeping your account compliant.

For example, you can set up a rule to automatically remove any keywords that trigger a Quality Score of less than 3. You can also automatically remove single word keywords through an automatic rule which you set to remove any keywords which do not contain a space character.

If you’re an eligible charity and could do with a helping hand to reach more donors, volunteers or campaigners, signing up for the Google Ad Grants scheme could be the best move you make this year.