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This is a step by step guide [case study] created by Evgeniy Garkaviy and Temitope Odurinde for Bees For Development Trust. The main idea of this guide is to show how to sign up for Google Ad Grants correctly so your charity can get a £6,400 free grant from Google Nonprofit programme.

Temi.uk website specializes in creating and managing Google Grants accounts for officially registered UK charities.

To begin, we suggest carefully reading Google Grants help page and find out if your ogranisation can apply for the Google Nonprofits program. In the example below, you will see how to get your charity approved by the Google Grants team.

We were working on BeesForDevelopment.org official registered charity.

Here is how you can join the Google Nonprofit programme:

1. Go to this page https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/nonprofits/ and click “Join the programme” at the top right.

2. On the next page, you will see a list of premium Google products available in the Nonprofit program.

  • Google Ad Grants: Free AdWords advertising to promote your website on Google through keyword targeting.
  • YouTube for Nonprofits:Premium branding capabilities on YouTube channels, increased uploading capacity, and more.
  • Google Earth Outreach Grants:Free licensing for Google Earth Pro and Maps API for Business.
  • Google Apps for Nonprofits:Free version of Google Apps for Nonprofits

In this article, we will discuss Google Ad Grants. So, click “Apply to Google for Nonprofits”

 

3. In the next step, you will have to provide some information about your charity organization:

  • Nonprofit status. You must certify that:
  • Your organisation is a registered charity in the United Kingdom.
  • Your organisation does not discriminate on any unlawful basis in either hiring/employment practices or in the administration of process and services.
  • Your organisation does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in hiring/employment practices.
  • Your ogranisation may receive this donation under its own policy and applicable laws and regulations; this donation will not negatively impact Google’s current or future ability to do business with my organisation; and this donation will not be used to corruptly influence any government official to obtain or retain business or any importer advantage.
  • Registration charity number
  • Subsidiary number

4. On the next page, you will have to complete a Membership application and the following fields:

  • Organisation name
  • Street Address
  • Post Town
  • Postcode
  • Organisation Phone number
  • Organisation website
  • Mission statement
  • Contact information of the person who created this application

5. Click “Submit” application.
It will take some time to review your application and, if your charity is eligible; you will get approved status. Once it is approved, you will see it as on the image below:

ogranisation approved

6. Click Sign Up button and you will see a list of Exclusive products for Nonprofits. Near Google Ad Grants, you will see a button called “Enroll”. Once you click it, you will be able to see Google Ad Grants restrictions for your campaign:

  • A daily budget set to £210, which is equivalent to about £6,400 per month.
  • A maximum cost-per-click (CPC) limit of £1.3.
  • Only run keyword-targeted campaigns.
  • Only appear on Google search result pages.
  • Only run text ads.

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How to create Adwords account that would be suitable for a Nonprofit program

 

Important: Your Adwords account must be new because there must not be billing information.

Before getting started with Adwords account creation, read the following:

  • Do not enter billing information. In Step One, Adwords will ask you to do that but you have to skip it.
  • Your currency must be in US dollars. Even if your charity is UK based as in our case study, your currency must be in US dollars.
  • These features must not be enabled: Display network, Display bids, Managed placements, Managed Placement Bids and Automatic Bidding.

If the above restrictions are not met, your Adwords account will not be approved for Google Ad Grant and you may be required to create a new account.

Also, it is important to understand that you can’t convert the existing Adwords account you already have to a Google Ad Grants account because it contains payment information.

Once you have created an Adwords account, you will have to create at least one campaign before sending it for review to the Google team. Again, you must be careful with the following restrictions (don’t forget that your account is in US dollars):

  • A daily budget set to £210, which is equivalent to about £6,400 per month
  • A maximum cost-per-click (CPC) limit of £1.3.
  • Only run keyword-targeted campaigns.
  • Only appear on Google search result pages.
  • Only run text ads.

I suggest creating one campaign with one ad group and few keywords. Once this was done, you can enroll for Google Ad Grants.

7. Usually, this process will take up to 2 weeks. But, for me, it was much faster, just 1 day. Once, your Google Ad Grant account approved, you will see it like on the image below:

Google_ad_approved

Also you will get an email from the Google team where they ask you to follow their rules. It means that within a few days your account will be manually reviewed to find out if you are not breaking the rules and restrictions.

To be 100% sure that your Adwords account is eligible and you will not be charged, go to “Billing” settings where you must see “This account is not billed”.

Billing

That is all. Your account was completely approved and you may use Google Ad Grant for your charity growth. $10,000/month sounds very good, but it does not mean that all work is done. You must create good campaigns, find profitable keywords, think about ads that will get many clicks and, of course, develop a nice landing page. It is very important because the charity niche is very competitive and, if you type “aid to Africa” into Google search, you will notice many ads.

aid_to_africa

The majority of them are using Google Nonprofit program. This means they have maximum cost-per-click $2 [if they are not eligible for premium nonprofit program]. So, if you want to be higher, you must care about the Adwords quality score. As you may notice, Bees For Development charity is on the 4th place for “aid to Africa” keyword, which means ads and landing page have a high quality score.

For example, this keyword “aid to Ethiopia” at our account has very good quality score 7 out of 10 and

  • Expected click-through rate: Average
  • Ad relevance: Average
  • Landing Page Experience: Above average

aid_to_ethiopia_keyword

That is very good. Such a keyword will be higher compared to those with a lower quality score.

It is true that creating an Adwords account and applying for a Google nonprofit grant is only one part of the process. The second part is even more important because you need to find such words that will bring potential donors, volunteers… fundraisers to your site.

Bees For Development Trust helps alleviate poverty in Africa through beekeeping.Everything related to bees in Africa could mean more donations to the charity. So, if you type “Africa bees” into Google search, you will see that our charity is in the first place:

africa_bees

First place in Google means more traffic to the charity. More traffic means more potential donors and donations.

That is the main goal of a good nonprofit Adwords campaign.

If you want to apply for Google Nonprofit programme faster and create high converting ads & landing pages properly – we are happy to help you. Just get in touch with us here.

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