How to Easily Secure $1,000 in Revenue From the Google Ad Grant

“You can’t use the Google Ad Grant to ask for donations.”

“The Google Grant is time-consuming and won’t actually drive revenue for our organization.”

“I don’t know any nonprofits that are getting donations from their Google Ad Grants.”

These are real frustrations that I often get when chatting with nonprofit marketers from all over the world about the Google Ad Grant. There are a whole lot of misconceptions about the Google Ad Grant.

Let’s learn how to register for Google Ad Grants and pick apart the biggest misconception around the Google Ad Grant. I’ll share my critiques and real data from two separate grant accounts that proves you can drive revenue using your Google Ad Grant. 

Register for Google Ad Grants

Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits is a program that allows registered 501(c)(3) nonprofits up to $10,000 per month to spend on Google search advertising. To get the Google search grant, your organization needs to complete two key steps:

1. Create a Google for Nonprofits account. 
2. Verify your organization with TechSoup (or Percent in some countries).

Can You Drive Revenue With the Google Grant? 

Here’s a look at some results, both taken from separate Google Grant accounts. While some of the data is hidden, you can see the most important conversion, called “GA4 (web) purchase.” This conversion collects and sends the organization’s revenue from Google Analytics 4 (GA4) directly to the Google Ad Grant account.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

For one account, the total purchase revenue from GA4 is $1,884.46. For the other — a nonprofit that is less than a year old — the GA4 purchase revenue is $337.31. 

Now you might have questions about the targeting, the date range and even if the conversions have been audited lately. What I can share with you is exactly what type of campaign I used to drive actual revenue from Google Ad Grants, and that is a brand campaign. 

What is a brand campaign? This is a very simple search campaign that targets keywords that include your brand name. If your organization is Save the Children, your brand keyword would be exactly that, “Save The Children.” With your Google Ad Grant, you should run advertisements on your brand keywords. 

So this means when a user types “Save The Children” into the Google Search box, your grant advertisement pops up first. This captures the most space on the search results page and gives the user more reason to click through to your website.

Click to enlarge.

See it’s not all that difficult to convince someone who already knows your brand (they typed it into Google) to donate once they’re on your website. 

Now I bet you could use a bit more donation revenue, couldn’t you? Don’t let this misconception stop your organization from securing revenue through your Google Ad Grant. 

I don’t feel that this common misconception will ever really go away. But you can see now that you can use your Google Grant to drive revenue for your organization. I hope by understanding this crucial point about the Google Ad Grant that you feel inspired to take advantage of this free offering for your organization. 

The preceding blog was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.