Each day, thousands of companies, schools and organizations go Google by switching to Google Apps to manage the way they communicate and collaborate, eliminating the traditional cost and frustration associated with IT. While IT infrastructure can be hard work for any organization, these costs and frustrations are often especially overwhelming for non-profit organizations with limited resources – which is why we offer Google Apps for registered 501(c)3s in addition to our solutions for schools and for-profit businesses.Read More

Each day, thousands of companies, schools and organizations go Google by switching to Google Apps to manage the way they communicate and collaborate, eliminating the traditional cost and frustration associated with IT. While IT infrastructure can be hard work for any organization, these costs and frustrations are often especially overwhelming for non-profit organizations with limited resources – which is why we offer Google Apps for registered 501(c)3s in addition to our solutions for schools and for-profit businesses.

Google Apps for Non-profits includes email (with integrated IM, voice, and video chat), Google Calendar, and online document and site creation, letting entire non-profit organizations share information and ideas more easily. Organizations with up to 3,000 users qualify for the free version of Education Edition, and non-profit organizations with more than 3,000 users are eligible for Google Apps Premier Edition at a 40% discount ($30/user/year).

USA Water Polo is one non-profit organization that has made the switch to Google Apps and was able to provide their 35,000 staff, volunteers, and players with improved email and advanced collaboration tools while re-allocating costs toward funding for their players, teams and members. Chris Ramsey, CEO of US Water Polo says: "With Google Apps for Non-profits we are able to provide a really high quality product at an incredible value, and this empowers us to run our own network without the cost and upkeep synonymous with a dedicated IT department." They have since moved away from their previous faulty mail system plagued by spam and server limitations and instead have found a cost-effective way to keep everyone in their global organization on a central network where they can share calendars and documents.

With over two million businesses using Google Apps, this is a great opportunity for non-profits to harness the power of cloud computing to improve the way they work, while cutting costs. Learn more about how to go Google for your non-profit organization.

Get timely updates on Google Apps and Google's other workplace solutions on the Google Enterprise Blog.

Miriam Schneider, Google Apps for Non-profits Team

The final speaker to highlight from the Google Grants Workshop series is Irene van der Zande from Kidpower. Local to the Bay Area, Kidpower teaches children, teens, and adults of various abilities how to stay safe, act wisely, and believe in themselves. Checkout Irene's experience in the Google Grants program below:

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The final speaker to highlight from the Google Grants Workshop series is Irene van der Zande from Kidpower. Local to the Bay Area, Kidpower teaches children, teens, and adults of various abilities how to stay safe, act wisely, and believe in themselves. Checkout Irene's experience in the Google Grants program below:

• Initially the account was just used for special events, but we have since started to align our account with our business goals. We currently using it to increase readership of our eNewsletter. Next we will use it to drive traffic to our training materials and donations pages.
  
  
• Finding time and resources are initial roadblocks, but restructuring internally will address this issue.
  
  
• Aligning campaigns with each organizational goal will take us to exactly where we want to be.
  
  
• Tip: Dedicate specific time for someone to manage the account if you can't dedicate a full-time person.
  

Thanks again to our Workshop panel participants for sharing their experiences and tips! You can learn more about Irene's experience and view the full panel discussion from the Google Grants Workshop on our YouTube channel.

Posted by AnnMarie Hill, The Google Grants Team

Last March, we announced that we would be requiring all US grantees to actively manage their accounts. In a couple of months we will be extending this requirement to all of our ...Read More

Last March, we announced that we would be requiring all US grantees to actively manage their accounts. In a couple of months we will be extending this requirement to all of our grantees worldwide. To help grantees better learn how to manage their accounts, we are happy to announce that we have created an Ongoing Management Guide (OMG).

Let's take quick look at what the OMG includes:

Account Overview:
In this section, grantees are given a quick tour of their account. This may be especially helpful for current account administrators who did not initially build their account themselves.

Basic Management:
In this section, grantees are shown how to schedule automatic reports and how to make use of the data in those reports as quickly and easily as possible. Account management has never been easier!

Intermediate Management:
This section is for grantees that would like to evaluate the success of their campaigns based on specific online goals (for example, which keyword is fueling the greatest number of newsletter signups). Here, youʼll learn how to implement AdWords Conversion Tracking, which enables you to identify which keywords and ads are leading to the valuable actions taken on your site.

Advanced Management:
This section is for grantees who are considering using Google Analytics. If youʼre looking for further insight into how users find and interact with your site, you may want to consider implementing Google Analytics. Weʼve included a quiz in this section to help you decide if Google Analytics is for you.

We hope each of you download your own copy of the OMG today!

Posted by German Freiwald, The Google Grants Team

Google recently released the first in a series of Google Earth tours called Climate Change in Google Earth in the lead up to the UN Conference of Parties 15 meeting in Copenhagen ...Read More

Google recently released the first in a series of Google Earth tours called Climate Change in Google Earth in the lead up to the UN Conference of Parties 15 meeting in Copenhagen in December. The first tour released, Confronting Climate Change narrated by Al Gore, presents scientific data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change alongside temperature rise models, precipitation change, water stress, food scarcity, sea level rise, and much more. In the first of this series of tours, learn about the mitigation techniques and adaptation strategies people around the world are confronting.

Tropical deforestation is one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide, and much of this is from burning down rainforests for agriculture or cattle grazing. In the next tours released as part of the series, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International have created Google Earth tours from two unique areas in the world where they have successfully helped local communities avoid deforestation or start reforestation projects -- in Borneo and Madagascar. Meanwhile, Greenpeace worked together with large multinational corporations in the food industry to initiate a mutually agreed-upon ban on soybean plantations, one of the primary causes of Amazon deforestation.

View the tours at www.google.com/cop15. Get involved at youtube.com/cop15.

Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach Team

As we've done for the past several weeks, today we are highlighting another speaker from our recent Google Grants Workshop. Today, we'll hear best practices and strategies from National Public Radio (NPR) ...Read More

As we've done for the past several weeks, today we are highlighting another speaker from our recent Google Grants Workshop. Today, we'll hear best practices and strategies from National Public Radio (NPR), a Google Grants recipient and Google Analytics user that provides non-commercial news and cultural programming. Javaun Moradi, who manages digital media at NPR, shares some tips below which have led to his organization's success with their Google Grant for AdWords advertising. He encourages other non-profits to put these strategies to work for their own organizations.

* Discuss your campaign goals up front (increased donations, volunteer registrations, newsletter subscribers, etc.) and set a measurement plan to track these goals.
* Regularly discuss AdWords with stakeholders in your organization. Coordinate the use of AdWords with other marketing campaigns, special events, and PR.
* Experiment often. This means experimenting within an ad group (changing keywords, ad copy, or bids) to achieve greater efficiency. But don't be complacent optimizing what you already have. Dedicate some time to experimenting with new campaigns and objectives as well.

Javaun also shares this valuable point for new grantees:

* Be sure you have a firm understanding of your organization's business before jumping in. To be effective with AdWords, there is a requisite level of knowledge about campaign creation, management, and measurement, which you can learn about in the Google Grants Help Center and other online resources. Without a clear understanding of your business, articulated goals, and a plan to measure your progress, it's much more challenging.

We hope you've found Javaun's insights helpful in thinking about your own Google Grants account. For more from Javaun and our other panelists, watch the recording of the session from the workshop here. You can also check out all of the other recordings from the Google Grants Workshop on our YouTube channel. Finally, feel free to share your own experiences using these and other best practices on the Google Grants User Forum.

Posted by Kristie Ferketich, Google Grants Team

This week's speaker recap from the Google Grants Workshop is courtesy of The Elder Wisdom Circle. The Elder Wisdom Circle is an online inter-generational program connecting young people seeking advice on life with seniors ages 60-100 with wisdom to share. Doug Meckelson, founder of the EWC, had the following to say when asked to share tips and best practices for achieving success in the Google Grants program:

• Take time to learn about your account, how it works, what tools are available. When we first started I would log-in multiple times each day to tweak and adjust.
• Look at your ads from the visitor point of view: is your ad is enticing them to click? Does the page they land on and the content they see after clicking on your ad make sense? Just having someone click into your site is not the end goal, creating some form of action usually is.
• Negative keywords are invaluable. We do not offer any type of medical, tax, legal or investment advice and early on we burned up quite a bit of resources dealing with advice-seekers we could not help.
• The message is pretty simple and that is to take the time to understand how things work. In the end this one little tool allowed us to reach the correct audience.

You can also check out all of the other recordings from the Google Grants Workshop on our YouTube channel. Also, feel free to share your own experiences using these and other best practices on the Google Grants User Forum.

Read More

This week's speaker recap from the Google Grants Workshop is courtesy of The Elder Wisdom Circle. The Elder Wisdom Circle is an online inter-generational program connecting young people seeking advice on life with seniors ages 60-100 with wisdom to share. Doug Meckelson, founder of the EWC, had the following to say when asked to share tips and best practices for achieving success in the Google Grants program:

• Take time to learn about your account, how it works, what tools are available. When we first started I would log-in multiple times each day to tweak and adjust.
• Look at your ads from the visitor point of view: is your ad is enticing them to click? Does the page they land on and the content they see after clicking on your ad make sense? Just having someone click into your site is not the end goal, creating some form of action usually is.
• Negative keywords are invaluable. We do not offer any type of medical, tax, legal or investment advice and early on we burned up quite a bit of resources dealing with advice-seekers we could not help.
• The message is pretty simple and that is to take the time to understand how things work. In the end this one little tool allowed us to reach the correct audience.

You can also check out all of the other recordings from the Google Grants Workshop on our YouTube channel. Also, feel free to share your own experiences using these and other best practices on the Google Grants User Forum.

Posted by AnnMarie Hill, The Google Grants Team

When creating an AdWords campaign for your charity, it's very important to organise your account so that there is a distinct relationship and correlation between the keywords you select and the ads that run against them on Google.com. As you build your account, you may ...Read More

When creating an AdWords campaign for your charity, it's very important to organise your account so that there is a distinct relationship and correlation between the keywords you select and the ads that run against them on Google.com. As you build your account, you may generate a large number of keywords that you think people will search for or associate with your organisation.

Once this list has been created, try to put the keywords into groups of around 10 to 30 based on common themes. The numbers aren't really important; it's more important that the keywords are grouped according to on concise themes, product offerings, etc. and aren't overly generic or broad in their meaning.

Your keywords will trigger your ad on Google. Therefore, once you have a tightly-themed group of keywords, you should write around 3 to 4 ad variations that reflect the theme of the ad group. This ensures that when someone enters one of your keywords as a search query on Google.com, your ad that's related to the keyword(s) the user entered will be eligible to appear. This is the ideal situation, because if your ad satisfies the need of the person who performed the search, they'll be in turn, more likely to click on your ad and then visit your site, which is the ultimate goal of your campaign.

Repeat this process of creating ad text and relevant keyword groups until you've covered all the key areas of your site. It is also vital that you send people to the the most relevant part of your site via your destination URL. For example, if your ad and the keyword that triggered it is about giving donations, you should direct users to the page within your website about how to contribute donations.

If you have any trouble generating keywords, you can try the keyword tool to find new ideas.

Some key points to note are:

1. Keep ad groups small and tightly themed.
2. Choose keywords and ads that match and follow a single theme.
3. Send traffic to the appropriate part of the site that matches the ad group theme.
   
4. Use the keyword tool to generate related keyword ideas.

Posted by Barney Durrant, London Sales Team