When I sat here at this time last year, writing a post like this one to close the books on another year full of changes and advancements, there were only a small number of folks joining me on the blog. Now, as we get ready to say farewell to 2009, I am happy to say that our close knit group has grown significantly, and that more of you are tuning in to get your ...Read More

When I sat here at this time last year, writing a post like this one to close the books on another year full of changes and advancements, there were only a small number of folks joining me on the blog. Now, as we get ready to say farewell to 2009, I am happy to say that our close knit group has grown significantly, and that more of you are tuning in to get your Grants info in blog form.

We love to see you coming over to catch up on the latest tips, tricks and - new this year - grantee best practices and case studies.

Also new this year was the launch of Testimonials. Fueled by your amazing stories, we're now able to share useful case studies with other non-profits so that they can be as successful with Grants, AdWords and other Google for Non-profit products as you have been. We thank you for letting us share your stories.

As we get ready to make our way into 2010, I'm excited to see what else you'll share with us and the new ways you'll put Google Grants and other Google products to work serving your missions. Be sure to tell us all about it!

And have happy holidays.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

We're excited to announce that the Google Checkout for Non-Profits program, which offered free transaction processing to Google Grantees in 2009, will continue to offer free processing until 2011! This means that current and new organizations in the ...Read More

We're excited to announce that the Google Checkout for Non-Profits program, which offered free transaction processing to Google Grantees in 2009, will continue to offer free processing until 2011! This means that current and new organizations in the Google Grants program can use Google Checkout to process donations for free for the next year. You can read more about this offer and learn about an experiment we did on suggested donation amounts on the Google Checkout blog here. Happy Holidays!

Posted by Kristie Mun, Google Grants Team

2009 was a big year for educational resources and support! We implemented major changes to our existing support model, while providing new content and additional resources.

Email Support

For direct support requests, we instituted categorized webforms where you can identify your issue prior to contacting our team. This way, your inquiry will be sent to an expert who specializes in troubleshooting the specific issue. Our webform system is designed to increase the efficiency and accuracy of the support you receive.

Help Center

In 2009, we also focused on increasing the content in our Help Center. We identified common themes in your emails and frequently asked questions, and formulated them into more than 10 new Q & A's in our Help Center. Now you can quickly find an answer to your question by simply searching the Help Center.

Discussion Forum

We found that one of our most valuable educational resources this year was our Discussion forum. The learnings gained from other non-profits shed a different light on the Google Grants program. Not only can you post questions and learn from others' experiences, you can gather tips and best practices based on the success of other nonprofits.

In the past 12 months, the forum has grown immensely in number of users. People are coming back to regularly to ask and answer questions, like:

How can we tell how our application is progressing?

Have recently been accepted by Google Grants, followed the instructions but account still not activated?

Any suggestions for goals to track other than donations?

Read More

2009 was a big year for educational resources and support! We implemented major changes to our existing support model, while providing new content and additional resources.

Email Support

For direct support requests, we instituted categorized webforms where you can identify your issue prior to contacting our team. This way, your inquiry will be sent to an expert who specializes in troubleshooting the specific issue. Our webform system is designed to increase the efficiency and accuracy of the support you receive.

Help Center

In 2009, we also focused on increasing the content in our Help Center. We identified common themes in your emails and frequently asked questions, and formulated them into more than 10 new Q & A's in our Help Center. Now you can quickly find an answer to your question by simply searching the Help Center.

Discussion Forum

We found that one of our most valuable educational resources this year was our Discussion forum. The learnings gained from other non-profits shed a different light on the Google Grants program. Not only can you post questions and learn from others' experiences, you can gather tips and best practices based on the success of other nonprofits.

In the past 12 months, the forum has grown immensely in number of users. People are coming back to regularly to ask and answer questions, like:

How can we tell how our application is progressing?

Have recently been accepted by Google Grants, followed the instructions but account still not activated?

Any suggestions for goals to track other than donations?

Looking ahead

As the year comes to a close, we are strategizing on different forms of educational materials for 2010. Here is a sneak peak of what we are working on:

The image depicts the lifecycle of a Google Grants application, describing each step in the application and account activation process. Visit our Help Center next month to see this visual graphic in more detail.

Thanks for a great year and we wish you the happiest of holidays!

Posted by AnnMarie Hill, The Google Grants Team

This month's resource round-up for December includes information about some new ways an old organization is recruiting and managing volunteers, a new way to get non-profit news in your inbox and some tips for hospitals to succeed in the trying economy.Read More

This month's resource round-up for December includes information about some new ways an old organization is recruiting and managing volunteers, a new way to get non-profit news in your inbox and some tips for hospitals to succeed in the trying economy.

Recruit volunteers with new technology
This YouTube video shows how the Salvation Army in Ohio recruits new volunteers using Google Voice (a free phone number lets them hear and read new messages at all hours) and how they use a volunteer managing system to staff their posts and see which ones are most effective.
Non-profit news
Get Google for Non-profits news by subscribing to the Google Groups newsletter. You'll get announcements about Google's non-profit resources and events via email - or choose to just read your digest online.

Hospital fundraising
As the economic downturn has affected many non-profit organizations, non-profit hospitals have also felt the pinch. In this article by Health Leaders Media, eight strategies for are detailed for philanthropic divisions of hospitals struggling to cope with the hard facts of recession.

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 discussion group so that everyone can benefit. If you'd like to review previous round-ups, just click here and read through previous months' round-ups or search for "resource round-up" from the search box at the top of the page.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

Winter holidays mean a flurry of activity, from preparing for guests and gift-shopping to putting final touches on end-of-year projects and advertising efforts.

For many organizations, work-related tasks come to a screeching halt by late December, until after the New Year. Many people are traveling, away from email, or spending time with family instead of sticking close to their computers. At the same time, the end of the calendar year is a time when AdWords ads can bring valuable traffic to your website--especially if you have a holiday initiative or opportunities for people to donate funds during the giving season.

During this time, some anxiety can arise for non-profits about what to do about AdWords campaigns: is it advisable to let a campaign run without being monitored for a week to ten days? In the event of an issue with a campaign, would there be a fast way to detect this without having to run several reports or log in daily?

There are several ways to help ensure that your Google Grants campaigns stay up and running for the duration of the winter holidays--without needing to unplug twinkle lights to plug in your laptop while singing carols.

1. Make any final changes to your campaign about five business days before you're going out of the office. This way, you'll be confident that the changes you made are working, ads are accruing impressions, and no red alerts are appearing that would impede ad serving.

2. Create a report template to send a report via email. The summary metrics will give you peace of mind as you're heading out for the holidays.

3. Set up custom alerts to automatically notify you if there are any stark decreases in impressions or clicks. Even if you're away from internet access throughout the last week of December and first week of January, custom alerts will help you immediately identify the potential dip and address the cause of it.

A benefit of online advertising with Google is the ease with which you can monitor performance and view real-time data. However, real-time data will still be reasonably recent when you return from the holiday break! Make any final adjustments before leaving the office, mark it off your 'to do list,' and enjoy the holidays!Read More

Winter holidays mean a flurry of activity, from preparing for guests and gift-shopping to putting final touches on end-of-year projects and advertising efforts.

For many organizations, work-related tasks come to a screeching halt by late December, until after the New Year. Many people are traveling, away from email, or spending time with family instead of sticking close to their computers. At the same time, the end of the calendar year is a time when AdWords ads can bring valuable traffic to your website--especially if you have a holiday initiative or opportunities for people to donate funds during the giving season.

During this time, some anxiety can arise for non-profits about what to do about AdWords campaigns: is it advisable to let a campaign run without being monitored for a week to ten days? In the event of an issue with a campaign, would there be a fast way to detect this without having to run several reports or log in daily?

There are several ways to help ensure that your Google Grants campaigns stay up and running for the duration of the winter holidays--without needing to unplug twinkle lights to plug in your laptop while singing carols.

1. Make any final changes to your campaign about five business days before you're going out of the office. This way, you'll be confident that the changes you made are working, ads are accruing impressions, and no red alerts are appearing that would impede ad serving.

2. Create a report template to send a report via email. The summary metrics will give you peace of mind as you're heading out for the holidays.

3. Set up custom alerts to automatically notify you if there are any stark decreases in impressions or clicks. Even if you're away from internet access throughout the last week of December and first week of January, custom alerts will help you immediately identify the potential dip and address the cause of it.

A benefit of online advertising with Google is the ease with which you can monitor performance and view real-time data. However, real-time data will still be reasonably recent when you return from the holiday break! Make any final adjustments before leaving the office, mark it off your 'to do list,' and enjoy the holidays!

Posted by Anita Varma, Ann Arbor AdWords Team

As 2009 winds down, our team thought it would be fun for us (and you!) to reflect on the Google Grants program over the past year. Over the next few weeks, each team member will be sharing his or her own thoughts on how the Grants program has developed in 2009. We hope you find our posts helpful as you reflect on your own organization's year and perhaps think of ways to make your Google Grant better serve your mission.

When I think of 2009 in regards to the Google Grants program, I immediately think about the community our team has worked to build among our grantees. Our team made great efforts this year to help current grantees and interested non-profits better connect with each other, sharing tips, successes, and challenges. We've taken steps to build this community through several avenues:
Read More

As 2009 winds down, our team thought it would be fun for us (and you!) to reflect on the Google Grants program over the past year. Over the next few weeks, each team member will be sharing his or her own thoughts on how the Grants program has developed in 2009. We hope you find our posts helpful as you reflect on your own organization's year and perhaps think of ways to make your Google Grant better serve your mission.

When I think of 2009 in regards to the Google Grants program, I immediately think about the community our team has worked to build among our grantees. Our team made great efforts this year to help current grantees and interested non-profits better connect with each other, sharing tips, successes, and challenges. We've taken steps to build this community through several avenues:

• Google Grants Workshop: In August, we held a 2-day workshop on our Mountain View, California campus for 100+ current grantees. The event was designed to better educate grantees about how to maximize their Google Grants AdWords accounts and use additional Google For Non-Profit tools. A major success of this event was the sharing of ideas and experiences between the grantees in attendance. We used this blog to share many of the best practices discussed at the workshop with those who weren't in attendance.
  
• Google Grants YouTube Channel: We launched this channel in late summer with several videos from the workshop. Through this channel, we're again able to share the knowledge and community built at the workshop with those who were unable to attend and we plan to expand on our video content in 2010. Check out our channel's videos now if you haven't already.
• User Discussion Forum: The Google Grants Help Forum was revamped this year to enable grantees to more easily post questions and offer answers to other grantees. This resource has been very successful at building community, as grantees directly support each other and connect through the forum.
  
• Webinars: Over the past year, we've also built community through educational webinars for grantees and interested non-profits. These events offer opportunities to learn more about the program and how to make your grant more effective for your organization. We held several webinars with NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network in 2009. You can search our blog for posts about past webinars and also learn about webinars we have planned for 2010 in a recent post. These events are a perfect way for grantees to connect with our team and hear questions and feedback directly from fellow grantees in the program.
  
• Conferences: Attending non-profit conferences has also been effective in spreading awareness of the program and enabling grantees to connect. Our team had a presence at several conferences in 2009, including the National Conference on Volunteering and Service and NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference. We hope grantees who attended such conferences used the opportunity as a way to network and share with other grantees in attendance. If you haven't attended non-profit conferences to date, we recommend checking one out in 2010, as they provide great resources, ideas, and networking opportunities to organizations of any size.
  
• Google Grants Blog: Finally, 2009 has seen a significant growth in readership of this blog, which is a great resource for our grantees to learn and connect through. We hope you enjoy reading our articles and especially learning a bit more about your fellow grantees through best practice posts.
  

We sincerely hope you felt more like part of a Google Grantee community in 2009. If you are looking for more, be sure to get involved through avenues like those discussed above and use 2010 as a year to more closely connect with your fellow grantees!

Posted by Kristie Mun, Google Grants Team

We wanted to share a recent story about an organization who used a savvy combination of resources to bring awareness to their cause.

The exciting thing about the strategy employed by the Coal River Mountain Wind Project is how they combined highly relevant Google tools to get their message across.

When working on your own organization's strategies, we'd like to encourage all of you to focus on using the tools most relevant to your message and seek out new ways to get your story to those who can help you achieve your mission.

Follow the links in the article below to learn more about the tools used by Coal River Mountain Wind Project.

Read More

We wanted to share a recent story about an organization who used a savvy combination of resources to bring awareness to their cause.

The exciting thing about the strategy employed by the Coal River Mountain Wind Project is how they combined highly relevant Google tools to get their message across.

When working on your own organization's strategies, we'd like to encourage all of you to focus on using the tools most relevant to your message and seek out new ways to get your story to those who can help you achieve your mission.

Follow the links in the article below to learn more about the tools used by Coal River Mountain Wind Project.

Last Mountain Standing: Coal River Valley Residents Fight for Wind Farm

The last intact mountain in West Virginia's Coal River Valley is slated for mountaintop removal coal mining. Local residents have other ideas.

The following post was written collaboratively between YES! Magazine, Appalachian Voices, and the Coal River Wind Project, based on an article which appeared in YES! Magazine on November 24, 2009

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A mountaintop removal coal company has begun to demolish the last intact mountain in West Virginia's Coal River Valley. Residents are demanding a wind farm instead.

Massey Energy, the fourth largest coal company in the U.S., has plans to level 6,000 acres of Coal River Mountain and its pristine hardwood forest.

Coal River Mountain is a place that inspires countless stories and where locals have enjoyed hiking, hunting, and gathering ginseng and morel mushrooms for generations. It’s also a top-rated potential site for the production of wind energy.

Lorelei Scarbro's property borders Coal River Mountain. She was born and raised in West Virginia and her father, grandfather, and husband were all coal miners. She lives in a house her husband built, next door to the family cemetery where he is buried. As Massey continues to blast, everything, including her life, is at risk.

Lorelei and others in her community have rallied behind an alternative to mountaintop removal—a 328 megawatt wind farm. The group formed the Coal River Mountain Wind Project and commissioned a study which found that a wind farm on the mountain would provide $1.7 million in annual revenue and create skilled labor jobs for the community.

Coal River Wind also teamed up with Appalachian Voices and Google Earth Outreach to create an interactive Google Earth tour and an accompanying video of the mountain's plight. The tour will be on display at the United Nations Climate Change Conference from December 7-18, 2009, as well as the Google COP15 site.

"Google Earth has made it possible for us to show the world that this mountain is a symbol of hope," Lorelei said. "If we can save this mountain and begin developing sustainable jobs and renewable energy, maybe we can have an impact on the climate crisis that faces us all."

The news of the blasting is hardly unique in a region where, each week, mountaintop removal coal mining operations detonate an amount of explosives equivalent to that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Obliterated mountaintops are pushed into neighboring valleys, burying headwater streams and contaminating drinking water with heavy metals. To date, a staggering 500 mountains have been destroyed, and over 2,000 miles of headwater streams have been buried and polluted.

The force of the explosions are so powerful that they shake houses throughout the valley. Less than 100 yards from the blasting site lies Massey's immense earthen Brushy Fork Impoundment; at 954 feet tall, it is the largest lake of coal sludge in the Western Hemisphere, containing 8.2 billion gallons of toxic waste. If the impoundment fails, Massey itself estimates that almost a thousand people would lose their lives.

A lot of people have asked Lorelei, "Why don't you move?" Her response is, "We don't live where they mine coal. They mine coal where we live."

Coal River Mountain Wind Project is hosting a demonstration on Dec. 7 in Charleston, W.Va., to save Coal River Mountain.

- - -

Jed Grubbs wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Jed works with Appalachian Voices, a non-profit organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia that works to stop mountaintop removal.

Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach Team

With readers from more than 16 countries around the world, and more joining us every day, we thought it might be helpful to add a new feature to the blog so that you could read blog posts in your own language.Read More

With readers from more than 16 countries around the world, and more joining us every day, we thought it might be helpful to add a new feature to the blog so that you could read blog posts in your own language.

All you have to do is choose your language from the drop-down menu on the right side bar under "Select Language" and watch as Google Translate's technology translates our English content into your chosen language.

We've had some good feedback on the quality of the translations, but your input is always welcomed. Check out the Google Translate discussion group to contribute to the conversation and improve Google Translate for all users. Or, if you're using Google Translate outside of the blog and notice that our translation could be better, click "Contribute a better translation" to suggest improvements.

While we'll continue to post in English, we're working on adding contributions in other languages and hope that you'll enjoy following along with the blog in the language of your choice.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of leading an introductory session about the Google Grants program with our friends at NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, and many non-profits interested in the program. During this 90-minute webinar, I covered the basics of the Grants program and Google AdWords, the advertising system through which Google Grants ads are run. I also discussed program details, eligibility guidelines, the application process, common questions, and helpful resources for prospective grantees, as well as answered thoughtful questions from the audience.

If you are interested in these topics but could not attend the session, you can review the webinar materials here. You can also purchase a link to the session's audio recording here.

If you are a current grantee and are interested in educational webinars on the Google Grants program, please review NTEN's website for details about our upcoming Beginner series taking place in January and our Advanced series starting in late February.Read More

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of leading an introductory session about the Google Grants program with our friends at NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, and many non-profits interested in the program. During this 90-minute webinar, I covered the basics of the Grants program and Google AdWords, the advertising system through which Google Grants ads are run. I also discussed program details, eligibility guidelines, the application process, common questions, and helpful resources for prospective grantees, as well as answered thoughtful questions from the audience.

If you are interested in these topics but could not attend the session, you can review the webinar materials here. You can also purchase a link to the session's audio recording here.

If you are a current grantee and are interested in educational webinars on the Google Grants program, please review NTEN's website for details about our upcoming Beginner series taking place in January and our Advanced series starting in late February.

Posted by Kristie Ferketich, Google Grants Team