As you likely know, the mission of Google Grants is to help you achieve your organization's goals by promoting your website via advertising on Google.com. And since the program began six years ago, we have thousands of organizations using Grants to do just that.Read More

As you likely know, the mission of Google Grants is to help you achieve your organization's goals by promoting your website via advertising on Google.com. And since the program began six years ago, we have thousands of organizations using Grants to do just that.

In an effort to make the next six years of Grants beneficial to as many organizations as possible, we've begun working on some program refinements that should help you make a bigger impact on your organization's mission and also lay the groundwork for new grantees looking to find success in the Google Grants program.

One of the ways we're looking to improve the success of all grantees is to encourage active engagement with your Google Grants AdWords accounts.

We have seen some impressive successes amongst grantees who login to their accounts frequently and work consistently to hone and improve the performance of their ads, and we want to see this same success across all of your accounts.

Whether you're logging in to refine your keyword lists, updating your ad creative to reflect new services or adding new adgroups to take advantage of seasonal events, the active management of your AdWords account is directly linked to the success of your campaigns and the impact your Grant can have for your organization.

To encourage active engagement with your accounts, we've looked closely into what constitutes an active and successful grantee, and will begin requiring all grantees to participate in the same level of engagement.

Beginning 5/1/09, we'll require all grantees to be engaged with the program and actively manage their Google Grants AdWords accounts. What this means to you, from an operating standpoint, is that you'll be asked to respond to email requests from our team and login to your account monthly to review your campaign's performance and make any applicable updates.

While this may not be a big change from what you're already doing, we're hoping this will guide new or unengaged grantees down a path to success with their Google Grant and that all organizations in the Google Grants program will be able to better serve their missions.

You've likely already received an email from our team about the specifics of this program change, but if you'd like to discuss this with other grantees, feel free to bring up the topic in the Google Grants Help Forum. If you have questions about your individual account, please contact our team directly.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

One of the most common goals we see amongst Google Grants applicants is securing donations. A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times published a brief article regarding online giving, and we thought it could provide some valuable insights for our grantees. In their article they note both the pros and cons associated with online donors (i.e. online donors tend to be better educated and have a higher income than their offline counterparts however, they also tend to only give only once whereas offline donors are more apt to give repeatedly).Read More

One of the most common goals we see amongst Google Grants applicants is securing donations. A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times published a brief article regarding online giving, and we thought it could provide some valuable insights for our grantees. In their article they note both the pros and cons associated with online donors (i.e. online donors tend to be better educated and have a higher income than their offline counterparts however, they also tend to only give only once whereas offline donors are more apt to give repeatedly).

We think that this article underscores the importance of using a Google Grants account for more than simply soliciting donations. Indeed, we have noticed that the Google Grants recipients, which tend to get the most out of their accounts, do so by broadening their marketing efforts to include a variety of goals such as recruiting volunteers, raising awareness about their cause, promoting events, driving free newsletter sign ups, and other strategies that engage Google users beyond procuring a monetary donation. Later, this already engaged constituency, may be more apt to donate their time, money, or resources to an organization, which they already know and trust.

Because so many of you are interested in using your Google Grant to raise money, we thought you might be interested in reading this article and the accompanying study done by Target Analytics. Please note that Target Analytics is offering a free downloadable report of their findings and a free follow up webinar on April 16, 2009 to discuss their research. We hope you find this information useful as you continue to manage your Google Grants account.

Posted by German, The Google Grants Team

How it works

Organizations that link their Google Grants account with their Google Checkout account can process donations for free. Within 10 business days of linking your Grants account with your Checkout account, you will receive an email confirming that your Checkout account has been approved for free transaction processing. Donations processed before this confirmation email has been received will be charged our standard rates.

Read More

With several changes made to the Google Checkout for Non-Profits program over the past few months, we thought we'd share a quick update with you.

As you may know from previous posts, non-profits that are part of the Google Grants program are eligible to receive free donation processing until 2010 through Google Checkout for Non-Profits. Google Checkout for Non-Profits is a fast, convenient donation process that helps you attract more donors and increase online giving to your organization. If you are not currently using Google Checkout for Non-Profits, visit the program's site to learn more. If you are using both Google Grants and Google Checkout, continue reading below for information on how to link your accounts and take advantage of this valuable opportunity.

How it works

Organizations that link their Google Grants account with their Google Checkout account can process donations for free. Within 10 business days of linking your Grants account with your Checkout account, you will receive an email confirming that your Checkout account has been approved for free transaction processing. Donations processed before this confirmation email has been received will be charged our standard rates.

Additionally, organizations that link their Grants account with their Checkout account by June 30, 2009 will qualify for retroactive fee credits, and any fees for donations processed since March 1, 2009 will be credited back to your Checkout account in July 2009. Your fee credits will show up as a lump sum credit adjustment under the 'Other Activity' column on the Payouts tab in your Checkout account.

Organizations that link their Grants account to Google Checkout after June 30, 2009 will be eligible to receive free processing for new donations only after they have received the email confirming that their Checkout account has been approved for free transaction processing.

How to link

To link your Google Grants AdWords account to Google Checkout:

1. Sign in to Google Checkout.
   
2. Click the Settings tab.
   
3. Click AdWords.
   
4. Enter your AdWords Customer ID in the box and click 'Request link'.

A confirmation email will be sent to the notification email address associated with your Google Grants AdWords account. You, or the person managing your AdWords account for you, must follow the instructions in this email to complete the linking process. If you don't receive the confirmation email, please review our troubleshooting tips.

If you are currently using Google Checkout for Non-Profits but have not yet applied for Google Grants, you can apply for a Google Grant account at any time. Note that the application review process for Google Grants is currently 4 to 5 months and we are working hard to process applications as quickly as possible. There is no way to expedite your application's review, so we recommend applying as soon as possible. As mentioned in earlier notifications, if you applied for Google Grants by March 1, 2009 and you are accepted, we will retroactively credit you for any Checkout fees incurred while your application was pending.

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team

Right before starting at Google, I spent another summer in Bangladesh, my family's home country. While I'm always thrilled by the country's beauty and warmth, every moment forced me to put faces to social injustice and poverty. In Dhaka, the global food crisis is more than just a headline or talking point; it's embodied by the boy who dusts the shops across the street, the emaciated man who sells flower necklaces by the highway. As a child, seeing this poverty both confused and motivated me; every time I visited, I left determined to grow up to be able to do something about it.Read More

Right before starting at Google, I spent another summer in Bangladesh, my family's home country. While I'm always thrilled by the country's beauty and warmth, every moment forced me to put faces to social injustice and poverty. In Dhaka, the global food crisis is more than just a headline or talking point; it's embodied by the boy who dusts the shops across the street, the emaciated man who sells flower necklaces by the highway. As a child, seeing this poverty both confused and motivated me; every time I visited, I left determined to grow up to be able to do something about it.

While most of the work I've done for Google Grants has been more locally oriented, I love addressing the same sort of social problems by being a part of the Grants team here in the American Midwest. Leveraging the power of AdWords, my core job, to spread the word about amazing organizations and their causes is a truly gratifying feeling.

As I help nonprofits set up and optimize their accounts, I get to feel like a part of the cycle of awareness and action that fuels social change. Regardless of whether I'm building an account for a nature conservancy in South Dakota or a homeless shelter in the heart of New York, I feel as though I'm tackling the same problems that bothered me as a child on vacation in Dhaka.

In fact, one of the most motivating aspects of Google Grants is the incredible range of issues, locations, and levels of change it encompasses. Just the other day, I was randomly assigned to optimize an account for the University of North Carolina Dance Marathon, a nonprofit with which my best friend works closely. They raise money for the North Carolina Children's Hospital, and I had been hearing about her involvement with this project for months. In addition to being gratifying on a deeply personal level, helping them get the exposure and attention they deserve confirmed my belief that Grants connects us to others on every level, from people across oceans to the people we've grown up with.

Like most Googlers, I spent a lot of my time before Google volunteering and working on community issues. I can't express how grateful I am to be able to continue to build on my past experiences here at Google. It's all too rare that a person's job and their passions overlap so harmoniously, but that's precisely what Google Grants does. For me, the question is never "Why Google Grants?" but "Why not?"

Posted by Hibah, Google Grants Volunteer

The AdWords auction works a little bit differently than what people normally picture when they think of an auction. That's why we asked our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, to break it down for everyone in a video posted to our ...Read More

The AdWords auction works a little bit differently than what people normally picture when they think of an auction. That's why we asked our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, to break it down for everyone in a video posted to our Inside AdWords blog. Keep in mind that it was originally produced for Google's paying advertisers, so references to charges and payments only apply as deductions from your Google Grant. Also remember that you're limited to a $1 maximum CPC bid, unlike paying advertisers.

Given those caveats, we think this video really helps break down how it all works and how you fit in to the overall AdWords auction. Rather than selling our top ad placements to the highest bidder, we combine your CPC bid with your ad's Quality Score to determine how your ad ranks and how much you actually pay through your Google Grant when someone clicks on your ad. You only pay the minimum amount necessary to maintain your position on the search results page.

Hal is on leave from Berkeley, where he's a professor of economics. Like a true professor, he makes this rather complex process seem simple. Have a look:



Posted by Galen, Google for Non-Profits team

Our resource round-up for March includes a how-to for creating forms and integrating them with Google Checkout, a NTEN conference preview and interview with a Google Grants team member, a ...Read More

Our resource round-up for March includes a how-to for creating forms and integrating them with Google Checkout, a NTEN conference preview and interview with a Google Grants team member, a SEM's take on changes to the Grants program and a special report on how non-profits are handling economic hardships. And don't forget to check back tomorrow for a video from our own Hal Varian where he talks about how the ad auction system works.

Learn how to create forms and integrate them with Google Checkout as a Google Grantee. Formspring offers a discount to non-profits for creating a variety of forms for use online.

Get an NTEN Conference preview and listen to an interview with Google Grants' own, Kristie Ferketich, in a recent post from Holly on NTEN's blog.

A search marketer from the blogosphere gives their take on the recent changes to the Google Grants process from an SEM's perspective.

Check out the line-up for NTEN's 2009 conference featuring seminars covering topics from social media and online outreach to wiki pages and changes in volunteerism.

Set aside a few minutes to read through a special report compiled by The Chronicle of Philanthropy that brings together articles, discussions and statistics that speak to the ways non-profits are coping with hard economic times. 

Come back tomorrow to get a quick and meaningful explanation of the ad auction system presented by Google's Chief of Economics, Hal Varian.

If you come across resources that would be useful to the greater non-profit community, feel free to post it to the appropriate topic in our Help Group so that everyone can benefit. If there are some resources you'd like to see featured in these round-ups, let us know. If you'd like to review previous round-ups, just click here and read through previous month's round-ups or search for "resource round-up" from the search box at the top of the page.

Posted by Jessica, Google Grants Team

test

Posted by Jordan Newman, Google Blog Team
Read More

test

Posted by Jordan Newman, Google Blog Team

Video Volunteers is a YouTube non-profit partner and Google Grantee who is using video in innovative ways to amplify the voices of citizens in the developing world. Put simply, the organization is creating a self-described "CNN or BBC for the one billion people living on less than two dollars a day."Read More

Video Volunteers is a YouTube non-profit partner and Google Grantee who is using video in innovative ways to amplify the voices of citizens in the developing world. Put simply, the organization is creating a self-described "CNN or BBC for the one billion people living on less than two dollars a day."

But they're doing things a little differently from mainstream media outlets. Rather than creating content themselves, Video Volunteers is trying to empower people living in slums and villages around the world by giving them the tools they need to create videos. By enabling local communities to tell their own stories through the use of affordable video and editing equipment, Video Volunteers hopes to set up a "global community media network."

They're already doing amazing work in India, demonstrated by this video, in which children speak out about the need for a playground in their neighborhood:



Feeling inspired by Video Volunteers? If you're a 501c3, you can sign up for your own YouTube channel and apply to the YouTube Nonprofit Program to get great perks like increased channel branding, the option to embed a Google Checkout button on your YouTube channel and the ability to upload longer videos. You can also visit www.youtube.com/nonprofits for tips on how to leverage YouTube most effectively for your organization.

Posted by Ramya, YouTube Team

What are the ingredients for a successful AdWords campaign? What specific, foundational learnings have proven useful for non-profits who are either starting from scratch or trying to improve current performance?Read More

What are the ingredients for a successful AdWords campaign? What specific, foundational learnings have proven useful for non-profits who are either starting from scratch or trying to improve current performance?

Students at Eastern Michigan University and Michigan State University recently paired with Google Grantees all asking these kinds of questions at the start of the semester.

In July 2008, we announced a recently launched program called AdWords in the Curriculum, driven from Google Ann Arbor. Most recently, AdWords in the Curriculum assigned undergraduate and MBA students at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) and Michigan State University (MSU) to local Google Grant recipients in Michigan.

 

AdWords in the Curriculum poises students to gain hands-on experience with building AdWords campaigns for Google Grants recipients. MSU student presentations revealed that each group's non-profit's AdWords campaigns had clickthrough rates of at least 5%, along with positive feedback from students on the value of the skills acquired through the AdWords-focused class.

 

At EMU, roughly 60% of non-profits have invited AdWords in the Curriculum students to join as interns since the end of the semester.

We'll describe two key learnings (relevant to all past, present, and future Grantees) that emerged from the students' fruitful semester of AdWords for Google Grants related to two areas of campaign management: refining keyword lists and selecting landing pages for ads.

 

Finding the Words Key to AdWords Campaign Success

 

Looking For My Sister, an anti-domestic violence non-profit in Wayne County, Michigan, had astronomical success with a solid 5% clickthrough rate, and a dramatic increase in online donations after the campaigns launched.

 

How did the students achieve such stellar statistics? A major part of their strategy was to continually revise and recenter keyword lists in order to avoid irrelevant traffic, which went hand-in-hand with overhauling campaign structure after assessing initial performance of ad groups.

For instance, the MSU students who worked with Looking For My Sister observed that the name of the organization (though memorable) is not immediately associated with the anti-domestic violence mission of the non-profit. The broader lesson? Keyword lists that rely on the assumption that people are Googling a non-profit's name may result in campaigns not performing to their full potential. Applying the lens and logic of marketing to non-profit exposure led to the students to compiling a more successful keyword list than originally drafted. To come up with revised keyword lists, the students ran reports like the Search Query Performance Report and Keyword Performance Report. These reports also made it easier to identify low-performing keywords to remove. 

 

Land on the Right Page: Fun and Games

 

EMU students who worked on Heritage Works’ AdWords campaign saw particular success with an ad group that promoted Heritage Works’ ‘Youth Zone’ page, with links to games for cultural education. The broader mission of Heritage Works is to promote cross-generational cultural understanding between youths of African descent and their families. While it may initially seem intuitive to have AdWords ads lead straight to a homepage, having the ads land on the unique games page effectively illustrated the mission of the organization: to serve as an appealing venue for children to learn about their backgrounds. Ultimately, the ad group with the 'Youth Zone' landing page had impressive performance. 

Here's the key takeaway: as you refine your AdWords ads, try linking to a page that shines a spotlight on a unique aspect of your organization--your homepage will still only be a click away after the user gets to your site. The more enticing the landing page content, the more likely the user will be to explore.

These two highlights are just a snippet of the tips of the trade that students of AdWords in the Curriculum develop through the course of a semester. We’re happy to share these best practices, brought to life by real non-profits like yours who can reap tangible benefits from using students’ hands-on strategies. Stay tuned to the Google Grants blog for future features on AdWords in the Curriculum!

Posted by Anita, Ann Arbor AdWords Team

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team Read More

We've seen an increased interest in Google Grants over the past few months and, as such, thought we'd share some extra information on the application process for interested non-profits. You can find details about how to apply on our site and also find answers to frequently asked questions below.

Q. When's the best time to apply?

A. Applications to the program are reviewed on a regular basis, so you can apply at any time. However, we do encourage you to first review the program website to understand your organization's responsibilities as a grantee, prior to applying for a Google Grant.

Q. When will we hear if our application was accepted?

A. Currently, we are processing applications within 4 to 5 months. If you haven't heard from our team within 6 months, contact us to find out the status of your application's review.

Q. What if our new site is not yet ready? Since it takes a few months to hear back on an application, can we apply now?

A. Your organization's website must be live and up-to-date when you apply for the program. Therefore, if your organization is still building its site or is creating a new site, you must wait until your new website is launched before applying.

Q. Our organization has multiple websites. Should I submit multiple applications or just include all of our sites on a single application?

A. You do not need to submit multiple applications if your organization has more than one website. In fact, we request that you only include one single URL on your application, most often that of the main site you wish to promote. Please enter this single URL in the 'URL of website' field and in Line 4 of your sample ad on the application. If your organization's application is approved for a Google Grant, you may contact our team at that time to review additional organization sites you wish to be promoted through your account.

Q. I just submitted my application and forgot to print out a copy. What can I do?

A. As noted at the top of the application, we recommend that you print a copy of the application before submitting it. Once your application has been submitted, we are unfortunately unable to provide a copy of it. Be sure to print your application if you would like to save it!

We hope the above information was helpful in clarifying a bit more about the application process. If you have other questions, please share them with others and get answers from experienced grantees in the Google Grants Help Forum.

Posted by Kristie, Google Grants Team

In an article on  NetSquared, a long-time Google Grants recipient,  Mercy Corps, talked about their strategy for making email and online marketing work for their organization.

They point to their well-honed email strategy as the key fundraising channel for their organization and mention some other online tactics that they may be working on in the future to add to their communication with donors.Read More

In an article on NetSquared, a long-time Google Grants recipient, Mercy Corps, talked about their strategy for making email and online marketing work for their organization.

They point to their well-honed email strategy as the key fundraising channel for their organization and mention some other online tactics that they may be working on in the future to add to their communication with donors.

They use different strategies with their AdWords account to recruit new email subscribers, attract new visitors and develop their brand. They also discuss how they use other tools and products, like Google Checkout and Google Apps, to make managing their marketing strategies easier and more effective.

Mercy Corps also offers some advice on managing turnover in non-profits, working with multiple AdWords accounts and the importance of good ad text and landing pages.

I hope that some of the advice shared in this article can help you take full advantage of your Google Grant. Please share your org's ideas for successful account management in the Optimization Tips and Tricks section of the Google Grants Forum.  

Posted by Jessica, The Google Grants Team