This month's resource round-up includes a smorgasbord of Grants and YouTube related resources from a variety of perspectives to help you get a firm understanding of the programs and how to best take advantage of them.

Google Grants, from a volunteer’s perspective
A video from the lifeatgoogle YouTube channel from Google Grants volunteer, Sidonie, describing her experience volunteering for our program. She works hard to get non-profit accounts up and running in the Google Grants program.

YouTube, for Australian and Canadian orgs
YouTube’s new Australia and Canada programs are picking up steam. Accepted organizations receive an increased upload capacity, placement on the YouTube for Nonprofits channel and the ability to add a call-to-action overlay to drive action to campaigns. Read more about the Australian program or apply today for your non-profit in the US, UK, Australia or Canada.

Google Grants, from a PR firm’s perspective
A PR firm’s guide to applying for and participating in the Google Grants program.

YouTube, for video-makers
And, if you want some guidance on getting the most out of your YouTube site, check out NTEN’s latest blog post about Activating Your YouTube Audience or listen in on an upcoming discussion on the recently launched CaseSoup where YouTube’s own Ramya Raghavan will join in with FlipVideo’s Basho Mosko to share secrets to creating successful nonprofit videos.

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

Read More

This month's resource round-up includes a smorgasbord of Grants and YouTube related resources from a variety of perspectives to help you get a firm understanding of the programs and how to best take advantage of them.

Google Grants, from a volunteer’s perspective
A video from the lifeatgoogle YouTube channel from Google Grants volunteer, Sidonie, describing her experience volunteering for our program. She works hard to get non-profit accounts up and running in the Google Grants program.

YouTube, for Australian and Canadian orgs
YouTube’s new Australia and Canada programs are picking up steam. Accepted organizations receive an increased upload capacity, placement on the YouTube for Nonprofits channel and the ability to add a call-to-action overlay to drive action to campaigns. Read more about the Australian program or apply today for your non-profit in the US, UK, Australia or Canada.

Google Grants, from a PR firm’s perspective
A PR firm’s guide to applying for and participating in the Google Grants program.

YouTube, for video-makers
And, if you want some guidance on getting the most out of your YouTube site, check out NTEN’s latest blog post about Activating Your YouTube Audience or listen in on an upcoming discussion on the recently launched CaseSoup where YouTube’s own Ramya Raghavan will join in with FlipVideo’s Basho Mosko to share secrets to creating successful nonprofit videos.

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

Last Thursday, we held the final session in the Google Grants Advanced Webinar series with NTEN.org. This session was focused on two distinct topics: optimizing your Google Grants AdWords campaigns and maximizing your organization's online initiatives with other Google for Non-Profit products.Read More

Last Thursday, we held the final session in the Google Grants Advanced Webinar series with NTEN.org. This session was focused on two distinct topics: optimizing your Google Grants AdWords campaigns and maximizing your organization's online initiatives with other Google for Non-Profit products.

The first half of the webinar was led by Lainey, a Google Grants volunteer and AdWords Specialist. In the session, Lainey shared strategies for successfully optimizing your campaigns, whether by targeting your audience by location or language or through properly structuring the themed ad groups within your campaigns. The benefits of using Conversion Tracking and Website Optimizer were also covered by Lainey during the session.

The next portion of the webinar covered Google for Non-Profit products beyond AdWords and Google Grants. This section was presented by Jay from Google.org. Jay touched on several free Google tools from which non-profits can greatly benefit. Jay discussed fundraising tools like the YouTube Non-Profit Program and Google Checkout for Non-Profits, cost-cutting tools like Google Apps for Non-Profits, and recruitment and outreach tools like Google Earth Outreach and Google Maps. You can find more information about these and other Google for Non-Profit tools here.

If you missed the session and are interested in these topics, you can find slides from this session and purchase the audio here.

We hope everyone who attended the Beginner and Advanced Webinar Series with NTEN.org enjoyed the sessions and found the content we covered to be useful in helping maximize your account. And for those who couldn't attend, we hope these blog post wrap-ups have been informative as well. See you next time!

Posted by Kristie Mun, Google Grants Team

The first post in this three-part series about the new AdWords interface provided a quick navigational guide describing the various tabs that appear in AdWords accounts. In this post, we'll talk in more detail about one specific tab: Campaigns.Read More

The first post in this three-part series about the new AdWords interface provided a quick navigational guide describing the various tabs that appear in AdWords accounts. In this post, we'll talk in more detail about one specific tab: Campaigns.

When you sign into your account, you'll see the 'Campaigns' tab, which lists all your online campaigns. It displays basic information such as daily budget, campaign status, clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), average cost per click (CPC), cost, average position and conversion metrics (when conversion tracking is enabled). In Google Grants accounts, the maximum CPC cannot be above US$1.00; although Grants users do not pay for ad clicks, the CPC helps us rank your ads on Google.

Click on any of the column headings to sort the data by that attribute (in ascending or descending order). You can set a date range for the statistics to display using the drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner; also at top right, the 'View Change History' link shows what changes you have made to your account, campaigns or ad groups in the past.

Notice that the 'Campaigns' tab now also gives you a graphical representation of performance within the selected date range. Above the graph, you will see a link that allows you to set graph options to show the specific data you wish to see, such as clicks or impressions.

All active campaigns in your account have the status 'Eligible.' At the far left-hand side of the page, you will see a tree view that lists your campaigns; you can also drill down to see your ad groups and click into any campaign and ad group to see details for that campaign or ad group.

Next to 'Campaigns' are more tabs: 'Ad Groups,' 'Settings,' 'Ads,' 'Keywords' and 'Networks.' Clicking on the 'Ad Groups' tab will show you all ad groups across all your campaigns. Similarly, 'Settings' shows campaign settings for all your online campaigns, 'Ads' shows ad variations across all your campaigns and 'Keywords' shows all the keywords in your campaigns. The 'Networks' tab provides a breakdown of search and content performance data. Google Grants advertisers need not worry about this tab because ads delivered through the Grants program run only on Google.com and not on our Search and Content Networks.

If you have clicked into a particular campaign from the 'Campaigns' tab or the tree view, then the various tabs will display ad groups, settings, ads, keywords and networks specific to that campaign.

On the 'Settings' tab for each campaign, you will find your campaign's name, location and language targeting, demographic targeting settings, networks and devices targeting, bidding and budget, position preference, ad delivery method and advanced settings for ad scheduling.

Location targeting allows you to target specific geographies—from countries, territories, metropolitan areas or cities to customized areas within a certain radius of your targeted region. Language targeting helps you target specific languages spoken within your targeted geographies. For example, you can target Spanish-speaking users living in the United States. Grantees can ignore the network and demographic targeting options because they are not applicable to you as a Google Grants advertiser. The 'Devices' settings allow you to target your ads to users browsing from mobile phones, from phones that use WAP browsers to full HTML functionality phones, such as the iPhone.

'Bidding and budget' are not relevant for Grants users; they allow paying users to state what their daily budget will be and decide on a bidding model (cost-per-click and/or cost-per-thousand impressions). Grantees' budgets are pre-set to US$329/day on the cost-per-click model.

'Position preference' lets advertisers specify what position they prefer for their ads on Google. Because your bids are already set to the maximum limit of $1 per click and no more, the only way to appear on higher positions is to have a great Quality Score compared to competing non-profits or paying advertisers. 'Ad delivery' settings allow you to decide whether you want to show your ads throughout the day (standard delivery) or as often as possible until the daily budget is exhausted (accelerated delivery). For Grants advertisers, the AdWords program will show your ads as often as possible within the $329 account daily budget cap (or $1,315 per day for Additional Services Grants accounts). Under 'Schedule,' you can choose a start and end date for your campaigns. This is good for advertisers preparing for a launch or specific seasonal promotion. Grants advertisers do not have access to decide on times of day or days of week to show ads.

In the next and final post of this series, we will look into the 'Reporting and Opportunities' tab in more detail.

Posted by Reema Prasanna, AdWords Team in Hyderabad, India

In last week's webinar with NTEN.org, we focused on best practices and advanced strategies for optimizing your Google Grants ads and keywords. Ryan, a Google Grants volunteer and AdWords Optimization Specialist, shared effective ways to improve the performance of your ads and keywords, making them as targeted and relevant as possible to your organization and what it offers.

The session conveyed the importance of using advanced reports in the Reporting Center, with specific emphasis on the 'Search Query Performance Report' and 'Impression Share Report' to evaluate performance and identify where optimization might be needed. Best practices for ad text, including creating multiple ads, testing different messages and using Keyword Insertion when appropriate, were also discussed. Strategies for building effective keyword lists were also a main topic, as Ryan explained the importance of "thinking like a user" and using broad, phrase, exact and negative keyword match types. Landing page optimization and Google Insights for Search were also highlighted during this content-packed session. If you'd like, you can find slides from this session and purchase the audioRead More

In last week's webinar with NTEN.org, we focused on best practices and advanced strategies for optimizing your Google Grants ads and keywords. Ryan, a Google Grants volunteer and AdWords Optimization Specialist, shared effective ways to improve the performance of your ads and keywords, making them as targeted and relevant as possible to your organization and what it offers.

The session conveyed the importance of using advanced reports in the Reporting Center, with specific emphasis on the 'Search Query Performance Report' and 'Impression Share Report' to evaluate performance and identify where optimization might be needed. Best practices for ad text, including creating multiple ads, testing different messages and using Keyword Insertion when appropriate, were also discussed. Strategies for building effective keyword lists were also a main topic, as Ryan explained the importance of "thinking like a user" and using broad, phrase, exact and negative keyword match types. Landing page optimization and Google Insights for Search were also highlighted during this content-packed session. If you'd like, you can find slides from this session and purchase the audio here.

This week, we will conclude the Google Grants Advanced Series with a session titled 'Optimizing your Google Grants Campaign and Maximizing Your Organization's Online Initiatives'. This webinar will take place on Thursday, March 18th at 11am Pacific. It will focus on two separate topics, beginning with ways to improve your overall campaign performance and then diving into other Google for Non-Profit products that can enhance your organization's online presence. Please join us!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team

Day 30 of an AdWords campaign should look very different than Day 1. Wayne State students of AdWords in the Curriculum learned this lesson quickly, according to Professor of Marketing Kevin Ketels. "I intentionally let students launch underdeveloped campaigns so they could watch the evolution from a non-performing to performing program," he said. Launching and then optimizing based on data proved successful for the Detroit Windsor Dance Academy team, particularly.

"When the team for the Detroit Windsor Dance Academy changed their general dance ad group to multiple ad groups that addressed specific types of dance (hip-hop, belly, adult, etc) with targeted ads, their results improved dramatically. Hip-hop ended up with 125 clicks and a 3.75% clickthrough rate (CTR). Belly dancing had 27 clicks and a 2.02% CTR, and Adult finished with 42 clicks and a 1.44% CTR. It was an amazing turnaround," explained Professor Ketels.

Taking a hands-on learning approach led students to discover best practices, rather than having them prescribed beforehand. The students also learned about differing strategies based on particular distinguishing features of a non-profit. For instance, competitive advantage can be essential for some non-profits, and less of a priority for others. "Another team did very well by identifying popular organizations that shared their mission," said Professor Ketels. "They then created ads that highlighted a competitive advantage held by their non-profit versus the other organizations. It worked brilliantly and resulted in more than 200 clicks and a CTR for several keywords exceeding 2% and one keyword topping out at 13%."

Campaigns are also affected by external factors which may be beyond their control, as the students learned. For instance, saturation in an industry caused some non-profits in the program to face high competition on keywords. "Developing a campaign for a hostelling non-profit was very difficult because of the extraordinary competition and bidding for keywords in the area of student and low cost travel. This team tried perhaps a hundred different combinations of keywords and perhaps different ten ad groups," Professor Ketels recapped.

While dealing with challenges of high competition or concluding that a keyword simply won't work for a campaign can be disheartening, the speed of results has been a win for effective campaign management and learning the platform. Rather than needing to invest hours in a campaign for months on end before learning that part of it is not working, testing periods can be a matter of days. From a teaching standpoint, it also changes timelines around grading for AdWords in the Curriculum students. Professor Ketels noted, "When you’re dealing with a live project where you can see substantive results in just a few days, it is archaic to ask students to turn in a paper status report that is then returned a week later."

With a semester of wins and challenges, Professor Ketels praised AdWords in the Curriculum as immensely valuable for his students. We're pleased that the program has been beneficial to students and non-profits alike.

"It was outstanding to teach the creative copy development process in conjunction with a defined target audience and to have almost instantaneous real-world feedback," said Professor Ketels. "I didn’t have to tell my students if they were successful or not, they could see their clickthrough rates immediately. It is quite simply an exercise that cannot be replicated in a traditional classroom environment."

Read More

Day 30 of an AdWords campaign should look very different than Day 1. Wayne State students of AdWords in the Curriculum learned this lesson quickly, according to Professor of Marketing Kevin Ketels. "I intentionally let students launch underdeveloped campaigns so they could watch the evolution from a non-performing to performing program," he said. Launching and then optimizing based on data proved successful for the Detroit Windsor Dance Academy team, particularly.

"When the team for the Detroit Windsor Dance Academy changed their general dance ad group to multiple ad groups that addressed specific types of dance (hip-hop, belly, adult, etc) with targeted ads, their results improved dramatically. Hip-hop ended up with 125 clicks and a 3.75% clickthrough rate (CTR). Belly dancing had 27 clicks and a 2.02% CTR, and Adult finished with 42 clicks and a 1.44% CTR. It was an amazing turnaround," explained Professor Ketels.

Taking a hands-on learning approach led students to discover best practices, rather than having them prescribed beforehand. The students also learned about differing strategies based on particular distinguishing features of a non-profit. For instance, competitive advantage can be essential for some non-profits, and less of a priority for others. "Another team did very well by identifying popular organizations that shared their mission," said Professor Ketels. "They then created ads that highlighted a competitive advantage held by their non-profit versus the other organizations. It worked brilliantly and resulted in more than 200 clicks and a CTR for several keywords exceeding 2% and one keyword topping out at 13%."

Campaigns are also affected by external factors which may be beyond their control, as the students learned. For instance, saturation in an industry caused some non-profits in the program to face high competition on keywords. "Developing a campaign for a hostelling non-profit was very difficult because of the extraordinary competition and bidding for keywords in the area of student and low cost travel. This team tried perhaps a hundred different combinations of keywords and perhaps different ten ad groups," Professor Ketels recapped.

While dealing with challenges of high competition or concluding that a keyword simply won't work for a campaign can be disheartening, the speed of results has been a win for effective campaign management and learning the platform. Rather than needing to invest hours in a campaign for months on end before learning that part of it is not working, testing periods can be a matter of days. From a teaching standpoint, it also changes timelines around grading for AdWords in the Curriculum students. Professor Ketels noted, "When you’re dealing with a live project where you can see substantive results in just a few days, it is archaic to ask students to turn in a paper status report that is then returned a week later."

With a semester of wins and challenges, Professor Ketels praised AdWords in the Curriculum as immensely valuable for his students. We're pleased that the program has been beneficial to students and non-profits alike.

"It was outstanding to teach the creative copy development process in conjunction with a defined target audience and to have almost instantaneous real-world feedback," said Professor Ketels. "I didn’t have to tell my students if they were successful or not, they could see their clickthrough rates immediately. It is quite simply an exercise that cannot be replicated in a traditional classroom environment."

Posted by Anita Varma, Google Ann Arbor

Last Thursday's webinar with NTEN.org was focused on monitoring and evaluating the performance of your Google Grants AdWords account. This session was the second in a four-part series and was designed for our advanced Grantees who are looking for more strategic ways to gauge the value of their campaigns, ads and keywords. Jessica, one of our Grants team members, shared valuable tips for evaluating account performance through AdWords reports and powerful Google Analytics data. How-tos and best practices were discussed, with heavy emphasis on the types of reports that could be the most helpful and the use of Analytics information to evaluate the effectiveness of your website as well. Analytics reports including Map Overlay and Site Content were two of the many highlights in this session. You can learn more about Google Analytics reporting in the Google Analytics Help Center.

If you were unable to attend this session and want to learn more, please review the slides from the webinar here. You can also purchase the audio recording of the session here. As we shared on this blog last week, we've included some hands-on exercises to put the information covered in this session into practice. This homework can be found in the session slides and we encourage everyone to try it out!

The next session in the advanced series will take place Thursday, March 11th at 11am Pacific. This session is titled 'Optimizing Your Google Grants Ads and Keywords' and will dive into how to improve your ads and keywords now that you have successfully evaluated their performance. Please consider joining us for the next session!Read More

Last Thursday's webinar with NTEN.org was focused on monitoring and evaluating the performance of your Google Grants AdWords account. This session was the second in a four-part series and was designed for our advanced Grantees who are looking for more strategic ways to gauge the value of their campaigns, ads and keywords. Jessica, one of our Grants team members, shared valuable tips for evaluating account performance through AdWords reports and powerful Google Analytics data. How-tos and best practices were discussed, with heavy emphasis on the types of reports that could be the most helpful and the use of Analytics information to evaluate the effectiveness of your website as well. Analytics reports including Map Overlay and Site Content were two of the many highlights in this session. You can learn more about Google Analytics reporting in the Google Analytics Help Center.

If you were unable to attend this session and want to learn more, please review the slides from the webinar here. You can also purchase the audio recording of the session here. As we shared on this blog last week, we've included some hands-on exercises to put the information covered in this session into practice. This homework can be found in the session slides and we encourage everyone to try it out!

The next session in the advanced series will take place Thursday, March 11th at 11am Pacific. This session is titled 'Optimizing Your Google Grants Ads and Keywords' and will dive into how to improve your ads and keywords now that you have successfully evaluated their performance. Please consider joining us for the next session!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team

On Wednesday, March 17th, Google Grants will participate in a webinar with ReadyTalk as part of a non-profit focused series. The session, 'Non-Profits & Google Grants: Your questions answered', will offer a high-level view of the program, best practices for grantees, and more. Brett Meyer, Communications and Web Manager for the ...Read More

On Wednesday, March 17th, Google Grants will participate in a webinar with ReadyTalk as part of a non-profit focused series. The session, 'Non-Profits & Google Grants: Your questions answered', will offer a high-level view of the program, best practices for grantees, and more. Brett Meyer, Communications and Web Manager for the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), will share first-hand experiences managing his organization's Google Grant. Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal.com, will be on-hand to provide strategies he's found to be effective in his pro bono work with non-profits and Google AdWords.

The session will take place on March 17th from 11am to 12pm Pacific. You can find more details and register for the webinar here. Please consider joining us for this informative session!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team

Last Thursday, February 25th, we kicked off a 4-part webinar series with NTEN.org designed for more advanced Google Grants organizations. This series, called 'Maximizing Your Google Grant To Meet Your Organization's Goals,' will focus on more advanced tracking and optimizing strategies for your Google Grant, as well as cover additional useful offerings like Google Analytics and other Google for Non-Profit products. If you are interested in learning more about this series, check out the series description and sign-up here.

In last week's session, Beth, an AdWords specialist and long-time Google Grants volunteer, started off the series discussing the importance of setting goals for your AdWords account. Without taking the time to identify your goals for the account, achieving success (and monitoring your progress towards it) is much more challenging. She also covered how mapping your goals to your account structure is a key part of the process. Many different AdWords tools were discussed, and the most relevant ones for grantees (such as the Ad Preview Tool and the Ads Diagnostic Tool) were highlighted. Beth closed with some hands-on exercises for webinar attendees to put what they learned in the session to practical use. We asked attendees to complete their "homework" before this week's session and look forward to seeing how they did!

If you're interested in the above topics, we recommend reviewing the slides from this first advanced session here. We also strongly encourage you to go through the hands-on exercises on your own - we hope they're helpful and that you'll learn something new! If you are interested in the audio recording from the webinar, you can purchase it here.

The next session in the advanced series will take place Thursday, March 4th at 11am Pacific. This session is titled 'Evaluating Performance and Monitoring Your Google Grants Account' and will focus on strategic ways to monitor your performance, with a heavy emphasis on Google Analytics. We hope you can join us - and don't forget your homework!Read More

Last Thursday, February 25th, we kicked off a 4-part webinar series with NTEN.org designed for more advanced Google Grants organizations. This series, called 'Maximizing Your Google Grant To Meet Your Organization's Goals,' will focus on more advanced tracking and optimizing strategies for your Google Grant, as well as cover additional useful offerings like Google Analytics and other Google for Non-Profit products. If you are interested in learning more about this series, check out the series description and sign-up here.

In last week's session, Beth, an AdWords specialist and long-time Google Grants volunteer, started off the series discussing the importance of setting goals for your AdWords account. Without taking the time to identify your goals for the account, achieving success (and monitoring your progress towards it) is much more challenging. She also covered how mapping your goals to your account structure is a key part of the process. Many different AdWords tools were discussed, and the most relevant ones for grantees (such as the Ad Preview Tool and the Ads Diagnostic Tool) were highlighted. Beth closed with some hands-on exercises for webinar attendees to put what they learned in the session to practical use. We asked attendees to complete their "homework" before this week's session and look forward to seeing how they did!

If you're interested in the above topics, we recommend reviewing the slides from this first advanced session here. We also strongly encourage you to go through the hands-on exercises on your own - we hope they're helpful and that you'll learn something new! If you are interested in the audio recording from the webinar, you can purchase it here.

The next session in the advanced series will take place Thursday, March 4th at 11am Pacific. This session is titled 'Evaluating Performance and Monitoring Your Google Grants Account' and will focus on strategic ways to monitor your performance, with a heavy emphasis on Google Analytics. We hope you can join us - and don't forget your homework!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team