The essential Google Ad Grants guide for charities

There is no question of the dominance of Google as a search engine (as of January 2025 their share is 89.73% of the global market). It’s often the first place people will go to when they want to find something online, even if they don’t realise it. Our learned behaviour now is often that a trigger happens – we hear or see something – then we pick up our mobile phone, go to Google (or a web browser using Google search) and type in some keywords.

This means that for any organisation, having a visible presence in Google’s search results against the keywords that are most relevant for them is really important.

The search results pages are very competitive, especially as many users will click on the top few results shown. Google Ads give you the chance to bid for your website to appear prominently, however this costs money – in some cases thousands (or even millions) of pounds per year – something that many charities just don’t have to spare.

This is where Google Ad Grants comes in, as the programme can provide your charity with free advertising. Sounds good? Then read on and we will give you the lowdown on this important topic.

What is Google Ad Grants

Google Ad Grants is a programme from Google that’s part of their Google for Nonprofits offering. Any charities that register for it are given $10,000 USD (approximately £7,900) every month of in-kind advertising. This is to allow you to create text-based ads and gain access to tools that will help you be found in Google Search, when people look for information that is relevant to your organisation.

Benefits of Google Ad Grants

A key benefit for any charity is this is in essence ‘free money’ to help with your marketing and fundraising activity. This means that you can use any allocated funds for some other channel instead, such as your website, paid social media ads or other activity.

Here are some other great reasons to apply for it:

• Reach the people who need help – if people are searching for advice, support or information that you can provide with your services, then you can ensure you are visible to them.
• Raise awareness of your charity – increase your brand awareness by running ads that area relevant to the space you operate in.
• Increase fundraising and donations – drive people to take part in a sponsored event or sign-up to be a regular giver to your charity.
• Promote a campaign – if you need people to support a campaign around a particular topic or issue, then you can use ads to get visibility for your charity in relation to this. Then drive them to a campaign page to take an action, such as sign a petition.
• Drive more website views – if you’re looking to attract more people to your website, for some of the reasons above (or more), then using Google Ads is good way to do that.

How to apply for a Google Ad Grant

In order to be able to use the Google Ad Grant then you need to apply for it (and be accepted).

Eligibility

In order to be eligible, you need to:

• Join the Google for Nonprofits programme – your charity might well already be part of this, so check first.
• Have a valid charity status, which for UK charities means that you are registered with the Charity Commission (or Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator or The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland). If your organisation is a Government entity, school, college, university, hospital or medical group then it is not eligible).
• Have a high-quality website that matches Google’s Ad Grants website policy. Google also ask that your website reflects the mission of your charity and that it is secure with HTTPS.
• Be approved via the eligibility form.

Steps to take

The application process is relatively straight forward, if you follow these simple steps:

1. Apply for Google Nonprofits – if you are not a member of this already

2. Complete the Ad Grants eligibility form

3. Activate Ad Grants – this includes verifying your website is secure, watching the welcome video and submitting your activation for review.

The application can take up to 5 business days to be processed, including your activation being reviewed. You can check on your status within your Google Nonprofits account.

Ignore billing information requests

One important point of note is that whilst you are waiting for approval on your application, you must ignore any requests for billing if you receive any and do not set up your own Google Ad account. If you do accept any requests and then go on to use another account for ads, you would be liable for any charges on this.

Once reviewed and successful, you will be provided with a Google Ads account and can then accept any required terms.

Managing your Google Ad Grants account

Despite the fact that you receive the free advertising budget, you will still need to ensure that this is managed on a monthly basis (and ideally even more regularly). This means you will need someone to manage the account and activity, either an in-house member of your team or someone externally who is an expert in Google Ads.

Due to the account being a Grant account, there are some restrictions and limits with how you can use it.

Ad types

You can only use the account for text ads that appear in Google search results pages, therefore you cannot use video ads or Display ads, or have ads appearing in other Google network locations.

This means that if you want to use other ad types, then you will new a standard paid Google Ads account to run these (and have the budget to pay for them).

Google also states that Grant account ads will appear below other ‘competitors’ who are paying for ads against the same keywords.

Budgets and bidding

There is a daily budget cap of $329 USD (£261), which therefore equates to the total monthly budget of $10,000 USD (£7,900).

If you use manual bidding, then there is a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) of $2.00 USD (£1.59). If you use Smart Bidding strategies of Maximize Conversions, Target ROAS and Target CPA, then you will be able to bid over this amount to help generate more conversions.

Keywords

As a rule of thumb, you are not allowed to use single keywords (with a few exceptions – see here) and your keywords should be mission-focused and relevant to your charity.

Also you are not allowed to use ‘overly generic’ keywords such as “things to do”, “download games”, “best videos”, or use names of other organisations, places, historical events or people.

Ad quality

Google specifies that you need to ensure the Quality Score of your ads to be 3 or above (the scale is 1-10, with 1 being the lowest). This means any ads with a quality score of 1 or 2 need to be paused.

The Quality Score is calculated based on a combination of:

• Expected click-through rate (CTR)
• Ad relevance
• Landing page experience.

Click-through rate (CTR)

Ad Grant accounts must maintain a minimum of 5% CTR (as an account level) each month. If there are two consecutive months where this is not maintained, then the account will be temporarily deactivated.

Conversion tracking

To help ensure that your Google Ads are making an impact for you, it is recommended that you track any conversions that subsequently take place on your website. This could include things like donations, newsletter sign-ups, petition signing or downloading content.

Tips for running successful Google Ad Grants

To help get the most of your Google Ad Grants account, here’s our top tips:

Structure your account

Giving your account a good structure will pay dividends, especially as you build out your campaigns and add more over time. To do this, create a structure of Campaigns > Ad groups > Keywords.

Create effective ads

The success of your campaigns is partly dependent on how good your ads are. For each ad group you should aim to use around 3-5 ads, to provide a variety for Google to show on rotation.

You should be using short sentences that are easy to read and understand – remember the user will be reading them very quickly before scrolling on.

Choose the correct keywords

As well as good ads, you need to be using the most relevant keywords. For each of your ad groups, list out all of the relevant keywords to ensure you have captured the best ones. You can sense-check this quickly by typing a keyword into Google and then seeing what other keywords are suggested to you.

Make sure you use negative keywords to remove any that are not relevant at all to your charity or campaigns.

Track the whole journey

To help you gauge how well your Google Ads campaigns are performing, you want to be able to report on what is happening with the ads, for example the number of impressions, clicks and click-through rate, but also what is happening on your website, including your conversions.

This means you need to ensure you have your Google Ads and Google Analytics set-up correctly and tracking everything, with robust data measurement.

Useful resources

• Getting started with Google Ad Grants
• Google Applied Digital Skills course: Launch a Successful Ad Grants Campaign
• Ad Grants Conversion Tracking Guide
• Ad Grants Community Forum