Google Grants – Free AdWords for Non-Profits
May 5, 2010 7 Comments
Please note this updated post about the Google for Nonprofits program which includes Google Grants among many other services: http://dalefisher.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/google-for-nonprofits-relaunched-umbrella-site
If you haven’t heard, Google Grants is a program where qualifying non-profits can receive FREE Google AdWords advertising. You apply online and because of the high volume of requests, you wait a long time to hear if you are accepted. In my case, it was over 6 months and then I learned it was a 2-step process. After the initial approval. I set up a new account in AdWords (you can’t reuse an existing account). This is where a couple of rounds of back and forth with the Google Grants team started. They are very specific about your keywords matching to your ad content. Unfortunately because of the volume of requests, I only received a very generic email feedback form as to why my new account was not approved. The best I could determine was my use of some generic keywords as the problem. I couldn’t use keywords like “classical” or “orchestral” — though something like “st. louis classical” was okay.
Here’s a screenshot of one of our ad impressions on the right “Sponsored Links” sidebar:
SLSO ad placed on Google AdWords - someone please click me!
Once approved you have, in theory, $10,000 a month in free AdWords advertising (or $333 per day). However you are limited to a maximum bid of $1 per click and I haven’t been able to generate enough click-throughs to spend our daily limit.
If anyone has experience with maximizing their grant, I’d love to hear any advice or helpful links. And a big “thank you” to Google for providing this great opportunity to non-profits.
Addendum – a few more helpful links:
Google Grant forums:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/grants
“Beginner’s Guide” PDF:
http://www.google.com/grants/education/Beginners_Guide.pdf
Dale,
Very glad you’ve started this blog. Will keep a good eye on it!
I learned about Google Grants through a comment on my blog when I wrote about SEM for orchestras. Do you know if any orchestra has had success?
Marc, Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I haven’t heard specifically about any Orchestra and their success with AdWords. I’m hoping I’ll have more time in the future to investigate better use of keywords and landing page optimization to increase the click-through rate (CTR). That seems vital when you are limited to the $1 per click limit.
- Dale
I hadn’t heard of Google Grants until reading this, thanks I too will be keeping an eye on this blog Thanks
We’re writing a bunch of these right now. The management is tricky
due to the restrictions on the bidding, but can be worked around.
How are your groups set up? number of keywords in each?
-John
John – I have a couple of campaigns set up. The main one is to promote upcoming concerts and within that are multiple ad groups that represent each concert weekend. Within those are a few ads for each concert with some slight variations. I think one problem I have is going hogwild on the keywords. Many are generically targeting people looking for concerts in my city. I’m going to experiment with ramping those down to keywords that really match up with the ad content and the landing pages. Hopefully that will get the CTR up.
Just found this thread again! Yes, hogwild on keywords is not going to help your campaign. Each campaign should have a tight grouping of theme. One campaign targeting people in one way, then next targeting people in another way. Otherwise, a bunch of non-performing keywords will drag down the average relevance of the campaign.
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