Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

We wanted to share some security tips from our Trust and Security team with you so that you can learn how to avoid phishing and keep your sensitive information safe.Read More

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

We wanted to share some security tips from our Trust and Security team with you so that you can learn how to avoid phishing and keep your sensitive information safe.

Check it out and let us know if you have any questions. You can also discuss phishing and other issues that effect your Google Grant with other grant recipients in the Help Group.

Posted by Jess, Google Apps Team

IT infrastructure is hard work for any organization. Having worked at a non-profit prior to coming to Google, I know that the combination of long-standing legacy systems and limited resources certainly doesn't make things any easier. Now that I'm member of the Google Apps team, I spend my time working on simple but powerful communication and collaboration tools for organizations.

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Posted by Jess, Google Apps Team

IT infrastructure is hard work for any organization. Having worked at a non-profit prior to coming to Google, I know that the combination of long-standing legacy systems and limited resources certainly doesn't make things any easier. Now that I'm member of the Google Apps team, I spend my time working on simple but powerful communication and collaboration tools for organizations.

Since we first launched it in August 2006, Google Apps has become one of our most flexible offerings. It's helping to meet the needs of family domains, businesses of all sizes, Internet Service Providers and universities. And starting last summer, we extended the Education Edition of Google Apps to registered 501(c)3s.

You may already be familiar with Google's standard suite of free hosted services, including private-label email, calendaring, and online-document sharing. But the Education Edition offers a number of value-added admin features at no additional cost, including e-mail migration tools, phone support for critical issues, and extensibility APIs. (Ads are also optional, in case you're curious.)

There's no need to take my word for it, though: check out our success stories from organizations that have already made the switch, including the Nonprofit Technology Network, Mercy Corps, Idealist.org, and the East Bay Community Recovery Project.

At the end of the day, enabling good works through Google Apps — in any capacity — both inspires and humbles us. We're excited to offer this worthy sector a low-investment, feature-rich IT choice. Find out more or apply for an account.

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

Earth Day is a big deal on the Google Grants team, and to get in the spirit, we wanted to give you environmental organizations a little extra love today.Read More

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

Earth Day is a big deal on the Google Grants team, and to get in the spirit, we wanted to give you environmental organizations a little extra love today.

Inspired by healthy competition and a little caffeine, we narrowed down our tips to our top five AdWords best practices for environmental organizations.

If you're focused on environmental causes, we hope you find these tips useful in making the most of your account on Earth Day and every day:

1. Be more than green! Use negative keywords in your campaigns to make sure that only the most relevant searches return your ads. If you use the word "green" in any of your campaigns, consider adding some of the following terms as negatives: packers, eva, eyes, al, bowling, tea, pokemon, acres, shades, mile, seth, laser, "green day," lyrics, dragon, apple, airport, machine, goblin, eggs and ham, eggs, beret, brian austin, putting, onions, sage, lottery.
   
   
2. Be active! Compose a razor sharp 'call-to-action' message in your ad text that highlights how a Google user can help conserve our environment. For example, include phrases such as, 'Want to be Green? Learn How!', or 'Learn How You Can Make A Difference.'
   
   
3. Act locally, think globally! Use regional targeting to deliver your ads to the most appropriate audience. If you are holding a beach clean-up, target those ads just to users in the beach area. If you are soliciting donations for your organization overall, adjust your targeting for those ads to a wider audience.
   
   
4. Recycle! Consider recycling text from successful ads for new ads in other ad groups.
   
   
5. Be efficient! Run on 'solution' and 'issue' keywords in separate ad groups. For example, 'environmental crisis' and 'environment issues' are good keywords for an 'Issues' ad group. Alternatively, create a 'Solutions' ad group and include the keywords 'environmental solution' and 'save the planet.' This practice will help ensure that the best ads run in each instance. It's also helpful when reviewing your ad performance.

If you found these tips helpful and want to find out more about making the most of your Google Grant, check out our Help Center or go on to the Google Grants Help Group to discuss these and other topics with other non-profits.

Happy Earth Day!

Posted by Steve, YouTube Team

Twenty-first century grassroots activism is increasingly cropping up online, and YouTube is a central platform for this engagement. Ever since the site launched in 2005, all kinds of people and organizations have been using it to broadcast their causes and engage supporters around the issues they care about.Read More

Posted by Steve, YouTube Team

Twenty-first century grassroots activism is increasingly cropping up online, and YouTube is a central platform for this engagement. Ever since the site launched in 2005, all kinds of people and organizations have been using it to broadcast their causes and engage supporters around the issues they care about.

To help you achieve your non-profit goals for organizing, fundraising and outreach, YouTube has created a non-profit program especially for U.S. organizations with 501(c)(3) tax status. This program enables you to create dedicated YouTube channels, making it even easier for people to find, watch and engage with your video content. To see some examples of great nonprofit channels on YouTube, check out the American Cancer Society, The ONE Campaign, and YouthNoise.

In addition to creating a special hub on YouTube for these channels, the YouTube Non-profit Program offers you the ability to collect donations directly from your channel using the new Google Checkout for Non-Profits tool.

Google Checkout for Non-Profits, which can also be integrated into your site, can help you drive more donations for your group by enabling supporters to contribute quickly and securely. And, we've committed to processing donations through Checkout for free until 2009. You can learn more with our Google Checkout for Nonprofits tutorial.

If you have any questions about the YouTube Non-profit Program, feel free to contact the team directly at nonprofits@youtube.com.

Posted by Tanya, Google Earth Outreach Team

It's an old problem — you're a non-profit trying to reach the largest audience possible to educate them about your cause. You're moving beyond sending out snail mail membership requests, and embracing Web 2.0. Google Grants helps you with your advertising needs. But where can you get help engaging the public? The answer ...Read More

Posted by Tanya, Google Earth Outreach Team

It's an old problem — you're a non-profit trying to reach the largest audience possible to educate them about your cause. You're moving beyond sending out snail mail membership requests, and embracing Web 2.0. Google Grants helps you with your advertising needs. But where can you get help engaging the public? The answer: Google Earth Outreach. Many non-profits have been using Google Earth and Google Maps to take people on guided virtual tours to add a spatial context to their cause. With Google Earth and Google Maps, you can fly people right in to your project site or send them on a virtual trip across the globe to bear witness to the issues that you're so passionate about.

As an example, the Sierra Club, one of California's premier environmental organizations, developed a map showing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil drilling project. Using Google Earth, they highlighted the proposed drilling areas and showed some of the consequences of opening the land to oil drilling. Read their full case study here. Then there's Appalachian Voices, an organization against mountaintop removal for coal mining, which got over 12,000 signatures on a petition after their layer launched in Google Earth (full story). More stories like these are featured in our case studies.

That's all well and good, you say, but your non-profit doesn't employ any code junkies. Don't let that stop you — we've got a suite of tutorials targeting non-techies that will walk you through how you can add your own content to Google Earth and Google Maps. And if you're not sure where to begin or what kind of maps you can create, see what other groups have done to tell their stories. If you've tried the free version of Google Earth but you need the advanced features of Google Earth Pro, qualified charitable organizations based in the US, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands can apply for a Google Earth Pro grant.

We love to see groups make the most of Google's technology to get the word out. Learn how easy it is to captivate your audience by telling your story in a spatial context with Google Earth Outreach.

Posted by Samantha, Product Marketing Manager

If you have a website, you've probably thought about how to attract more attention to it. You may have already spent time optimizing it and applying for a Google Grant to drive new traffic to your site. But one lesser-known way to drive traffic and reach your supporters with your messages is by building and promoting a ...Read More

Posted by Samantha, Product Marketing Manager

If you have a website, you've probably thought about how to attract more attention to it. You may have already spent time optimizing it and applying for a Google Grant to drive new traffic to your site. But one lesser-known way to drive traffic and reach your supporters with your messages is by building and promoting a Google Gadget with the Gadget Builder for Organizations.

Google Gadgets are like miniature web pages that people can add to iGoogle (the personalized version of the Google homepage) and other websites. Tens of millions of people have their own iGoogle pages, and many of them arrive directly at iGoogle when they visit Google.com. Your gadget could contain snippets of your website's most recent news, video and various other kinds of content; it's an innovative and effective way to keep in touch with your supporters and publicize your cause.

Once you've created a gadget, you can submit it for inclusion in the gadget directory. You can also promote it prominently from your own website so that your supporters can add it to iGoogle and stay up-to-date on your organization's activities. Supporters can also share it with their friends and add it to their own websites.

Creating a gadget is fairly simple: you just need some content (YouTube channel, newsletter, blog, online donation capabilities, initiative updates, etc.), a logo for your organization, and the ability to upload your gadget to your website.

Start by using the Gadget Builder for Organizations to create a simple one and learn how to promote and track its usage. If you have any feedback, you can send it to gadgetsfornonprofits-feedback@google.com. We can't guarantee a response to every message, but we're interested in your thoughts about the tool.

Check out the Google Gadget Center if you'd like more information about our gadgets in general. Advanced developers can learn more from the Google Gadgets API.

Posted by Cynthia, Google Grants Team

This week we're celebrating the fifth birthday of Google Grants—the company's inaugural philanthropic program—and we thought we'd share with you the story of its early days.Read More

Posted by Cynthia, Google Grants Team

This week we're celebrating the fifth birthday of Google Grants—the company's inaugural philanthropic program—and we thought we'd share with you the story of its early days.

In early 2002, Google's self-service advertising platform AdWords relaunched with a new cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model. This model made search advertising as cost-effective for small businesses as for large ones.

As AdWords took off, our co-founders Larry and Sergey, and other Google executives, wanted to extend the power of search advertising to non-profit organizations by giving them free ads on Google.com. They thought that, through AdWords, non-profits too could reach a wider audience and connect with the people who were searching for information about their specific cause or programs. No laborious meetings or extended discussions were necessary: that desire to support non-profits led directly to the idea of Google Grants.

But how to manage a new program for this audience? Back then, we had only about five hundred Googlers developing the infrastructure and tools to support the thousands of advertisers who began flocking to Google AdWords.

Now imagine asking these people to volunteer extra time to help launch and support this non-revenue-generating project! Yet, true to form, many Googlers did just that. By the end of 2002, our employees were referring their favorite non-profits to our nascent program.

After a couple of meetings with our founders and other executives about how to choose the most worthy applicants, we decided our goal would be to extend Google Grants to as many organizations as possible—to share our philosophy of community service to help the world.

Over time, this goal has meant that we're able to say "yes" a lot more than "no." We support a myriad of organizations, large and small, around the globe. Along the way, we've learned a lot about working with non-profits, and with that knowledge we've continued to make changes to the program.

So where are we today? Since activating our first account on April 1, 2003, we've launched Google Grants in 15 additional countries (with more to come). With the help of nearly 1,000 Googler volunteers worldwide, we currently support more than 4,000 grantees with free AdWords advertising. To date, the combined value of the clicks accrued by grantee advertisers on Google.com is approximately $273.3 million. But the impact on our grant recipients is immeasurable. We'll be sharing some of these success stories in future posts.

Please join us in celebrating this milestone by sharing your own Google Grants experience via our Help Center form. We all enjoy reading your success stories as much as I hope you've enjoyed this post.

Here's to the next five years. We look forward to our continued work together with you!