Google for Nonprofits vs. the Ad Grant: What Is Actually Included

Google for Nonprofits provides verified nonprofits with free or discounted tools, including the Google Ad Grant, which provides up to $10,000 a month in search ads. For a nonprofit with a small budget, that can mean reaching donors well beyond the area it serves today.

Reaching donors in new states also raises a question about charitable registration. The sections below cover what each of the four offerings includes, what the Ad Grant requires every month, and what to check before you advertise to residents of another state.

What Google for Nonprofits Includes

Google for Nonprofits is a program that gives verified nonprofits free or discounted access to Google tools. The program overview page lists four offerings:

• Google Workspace for Nonprofits
• Google Ad Grants
• YouTube Nonprofit Program
• Google Maps Platform credits worth $250 a month

After Google verifies your organization, you activate each offering from your Google for Nonprofits account.

The free edition of Google Workspace for Nonprofits includes email addresses on your own domain, 100 TB of storage shared across your team, and video meetings with up to 150 participants. Nonprofit Workspace accounts top out at 2,000 users.

The YouTube Nonprofit Program adds link-anywhere cards that send viewers from a video to any page you choose, such as your donation form. U.S. nonprofits also get YouTube Giving fundraising features, and YouTube’s Creator Academy offers lessons written for nonprofits. The Maps Platform credit covers uses like data visualizations and maps of the community resources you provide.

What the Google Ad Grant Includes

The Ad Grant gives you up to $10,000 a month in text ads that appear in Google Search results. You can track actions such as donations, newsletter sign-ups, and volunteer registrations to see which searches turn into support.

To activate it, your nonprofit must meet a few additional requirements beyond the Google for Nonprofits criteria. Google’s Ad Grants eligibility requirements and activation guidance list what your organization needs:

• A nonprofit operated exclusively for charitable purposes
• Agreement to Google’s terms and Google Ads policies
• No election ads in regions where Google requires election advertiser verification
• A working, secure (HTTPS) website that accurately reflects your mission

Activation starts in your Google for Nonprofits account, where you select Get started under Google Ad Grants and enter your website. Google’s Ad Grants activation steps then ask you to watch a welcome video of about five minutes on program requirements before you submit an activation request. Review can take several business days, and Google creates your Ads account at activation, so you don’t need to create one yourself.

Getting your website and conversion goals ready before you apply makes the review smoother, and our Ad Grant application guide covers that preparation step by step.

Eligibility Requirements for Google for Nonprofits and the Ad Grant

The Ad Grant uses the same verification as the rest of Google for Nonprofits. Under Google’s nonprofit eligibility requirements, a U.S. organization must be registered with the IRS as exempt under Section 501(c)(3) or be a group exempt organization with proven affiliation to a central 501(c)(3). Goodstack, Google’s validation partner, checks your 501(c)(3) status, which usually takes 2 to 14 business days.

Organizations that can’t join Google for Nonprofits:

• Government entities
• Hospitals and health care organizations, though their charitable foundations are eligible
• Schools, academic institutions, and universities, though their philanthropic arms are eligible
• Fiscally sponsored organizations without their own 501(c)(3) status

Google verifies your federal tax exemption before you can activate any offering. If your organization is still working toward it, our overview of nonprofit tax-exempt status explains how the process works.

How to Keep the Ad Grant Active

The Ad Grant is the one offering with monthly performance requirements. Google’s account management policy says your account needs:

• A click-through rate (CTR) of at least 5% each month
• At least two unique sitelink assets, the extra links below an ad that point to specific pages on your site
• Location targeting set to places where people will find your services useful
• Conversion tracking that records at least one meaningful conversion a month, such as a donation or volunteer sign-up
• Conversion-based Smart Bidding, such as Maximize conversions, on all campaigns unless you use Smart campaigns, a rule that covers every account created on or after April 22, 2019
• Responses to Google’s periodic program surveys

If your CTR stays below 5% for two consecutive months, Google deactivates the grant. Skipping a program survey can also lead to deactivation, and Google may suspend an account that violates program policies without notice.

Once you’ve fixed the issue, you can ask Google to reinstate the account.

Best Practices for Running Ad Grant Campaigns

Meeting the monthly requirements keeps the grant active. How you set up the account affects whether those clicks turn into donations and sign-ups, and Google’s tips for Ad Grants success and Ad Grants policy compliance guide lay out these practices:

• Build each campaign around one goal, such as donations or volunteer recruitment, and give it at least two ad groups of closely related keywords.
• Use multi-word keywords that match how people search, since the program doesn’t allow single-word terms except in cases like your own brand name.
• Send each ad to the landing page that matches its keywords, such as your donation form for searches about giving.
• Write short ad text without repetition, and skip acronyms most searchers wouldn’t recognize.
• Pause or remove keywords with a Quality Score of 1 or 2, as required by the program, along with any that draw many impressions but few clicks.
• Check the Search Terms report for multi-word queries with a strong CTR and add them as keywords.

Location targeting needs the same attention. Google asks you to target places where people will find your services useful, so an organization that serves one town should show its ads only in that area. A nonprofit with a regional or national mission can target more widely, and every state it adds is a place where it may be asking residents to give.

Charitable Registration Before You Expand Fundraising

Wider targeting can bring in donors well beyond the area you serve today, and each state you add may have its own fundraising rules. Check them before your campaigns go live in a new state.

At the time of this article, 40 states require nonprofits to register before soliciting their residents, and 25 require specific disclosures on solicitation materials, which you can read in our charitable registration guide. Online appeals can count too.

To decide whether to register in a state, ask whether your ads invite its residents to donate. If they do and the state requires registration, plan to register there.

Before you launch or expand a campaign, run through this checkpoint:

1. List every state your ads and donation appeals will target.
2. Check each state’s registration and disclosure requirements.
3. Register where required before the campaign goes live.
4. Renew each registration and file annual reports on time.

Worried about the cost of registering? Free Workspace accounts, $250 a month in Maps credit, and up to $10,000 a month in search ads can cover costs your budget would otherwise carry. How much that frees up depends on what you already pay for, and part of it could go toward the registrations your new campaigns need.

How Harbor Compliance Helps With Charitable Registration

Once you know which states your campaigns will reach, the work shifts to getting registered in each one and staying current. Our Charitable Registration service gives you a single specialist as your point of contact. That specialist completes your initial registrations, exemptions, renewals, and extensions.

Partner with our charitable registration team before your next campaign reaches new states.

Google for Nonprofits FAQs