Last year we asked participants in the Google Grants program to submit surveys about their experience with Google Grants, AdWords and other products. Of the responses we received, we were able to glean a bit of insight into the industries that make up the non-profits in our program and would like to share those insights with you for the purposes of creating your own benchmarks and metrics in this ...Read More

Last year we asked participants in the Google Grants program to submit surveys about their experience with Google Grants, AdWords and other products. Of the responses we received, we were able to glean a bit of insight into the industries that make up the non-profits in our program and would like to share those insights with you for the purposes of creating your own benchmarks and metrics in this monthly benchmarking series.

This month we’re featuring the Health Care category of the non-profit industry. Look to future months for other NTEE non-profit categories.

Grantees in the Health Care industry were most likely to track “donations” as their most important metric, state "reaching new constituents" as their main mission objective served via their Grant and state "raising awareness" as the main marketing objective served via their Google Grant.

With regard to the performance of their Grants AdWords account, they received an average of 20% of their total site visits from their Grants AdWords account and an average of 6,500 conversions over the last year (11/2009 - 11/2010).

An average of 10% of Health Care organizations who responded to the survey report that they currently use an agency, SEO or SEM to manage their Grants AdWords account.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

Yesterday, the Union of Concerned Scientists launched their Climate Hot Map in an effort to communicate how scientists are proving that global warming is already affecting people and places around the world. Using the free Google Maps API, visitors to the site can now visit 60 hotspots that are changing due to climate change. The Climate Hot Map is part of a larger ...Read More

Yesterday, the Union of Concerned Scientists launched their Climate Hot Map in an effort to communicate how scientists are proving that global warming is already affecting people and places around the world. Using the free Google Maps API, visitors to the site can now visit 60 hotspots that are changing due to climate change. The Climate Hot Map is part of a larger Weight of the Evidence campaign launched by UCS.

Climate change affects everyone, and it’s already impacting many people in varying degrees around the globe. However, there is hope for mitigating these climate impacts. Through the Climate Hot Map, you can take action by directly contacting companies and governments and support regional solutions to global warming.

For example, ocean acidification is a big problem for coral reefs, which concerns me because in a couple weeks I’ll be diving in the Caribbean. Acidification makes the process of shell-creation much harder for shellfish and calcification harder for corals. I hope these reefs will still be there for future generations. But ocean acidification is such a global problem -- how can I take action? In the pop-up balloon of the Climate Hot Map, I can fill out a form to send an email to Ban Ki-Moon to show my support for the UNFCCC’s “Green Climate Fund.”

These solutions help give people hope that mitigating the impacts of climate change is possible.

In addition to providing this valuable educational resource and advocacy tool, the Climate Hot Map has announced a Scavenger Hunt. Answer eight questions about where specific impacts of climate change and global warming are already taking place and you could win prizes like an Earthwatch expedition.

This project was funded by Google.org and Google Earth Outreach’s GeoChallenge Grants. This year, we’re supporting a new crop of projects through Developer Grants and can’t wait to see the latest ways nonprofits are using Google Earth and Maps to tell their stories.

Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach Team

Editor’s note: Our guest blogger today is Kate Emanuel, Senior Vice President of Nonprofit & Government Affairs at the Ad Council, the leading producer of public service advertising campaigns.

The Ad Council has produced thousands of PSA campaigns that address the most pressing social issues of the day. You may be familiar with some of our more iconic figures and slogans--McGruff the Crime Dog, "A Mind is a Terrible Thing To Waste", or "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk." And you may or may not be familiar with our more current campaigns with some of the nation’s leading nonprofits: hunger (with Feeding America), mentoring (with Big Brothers Big Sisters), unplanned pregnancy (with the National Campaign to End Teenage and Unplanned Pregnancy), or adult literacy (with the Dollar Store Foundation).Read More

Editor’s note: Our guest blogger today is Kate Emanuel, Senior Vice President of Nonprofit & Government Affairs at the Ad Council, the leading producer of public service advertising campaigns.

The Ad Council has produced thousands of PSA campaigns that address the most pressing social issues of the day. You may be familiar with some of our more iconic figures and slogans--McGruff the Crime Dog, "A Mind is a Terrible Thing To Waste", or "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk." And you may or may not be familiar with our more current campaigns with some of the nation’s leading nonprofits: hunger (with Feeding America), mentoring (with Big Brothers Big Sisters), unplanned pregnancy (with the National Campaign to End Teenage and Unplanned Pregnancy), or adult literacy (with the Dollar Store Foundation).

Whether it’s fighting polio in the 1950’s or obesity prevention in 2011, the Ad Council’s mission and model has remained the same: we marshal the volunteer resources of the country’s ad agencies and media companies to raise awareness, change attitudes and spark social change.

But whether you’re the Ad Council, a large NGO or a small nonprofit with limited resources, we all face the same communications challenge: How to raise awareness for your cause against the backdrop of a cluttered media landscape and distracted consumers?

We don’t have all the answers but we always like to share our best practices and learn from others. That’s why we, along with Google, created a quarterly workshop series for the nonprofit community where we tackle all sort of emerging communications tools including mobile marketing, online contests, blogging, YouTube, and online video. Our latest briefing covered the suite of nonprofit tools offered by Google. Many of these programs are free and can really help nonprofits reach more donors, improve operations and raise awareness for their cause.

Held in Washington, DC and New York, the events featured presentations by Google for Nonprofits team members who covered tools including:

• Google Grants: Free AdWords advertising given to select charitable organizations to solicit donations, recruit volunteers and raise awareness
• Mapping Technologies: How you can bring your story to life using Google Earth and Maps)
• Google Analytics: How to analyze your web traffic in an entirely new way. Or track email campaigns, banner ads, web-enabled phones, mobile websites and mobile apps.)

You can view the Google Analytics, Grants, and Geo briefings on the Google for Nonprofits YouTube channel or check out the Google for Nonprofits website at www.google.com/nonprofits.

And if you’d like to be added to our email list for future events, please contact Danna Kulzer, Director/Nonprofit & Government Affairs. We’re always in search of new topics, attendees and shared learning!

Posted by Kate Emanuel, The Ad Council

New to map-making with Google tools? Last week we focused on how you could get started by creating a map of your organization’s offices with Google Maps My Places. After walking through My Places, I mentioned ...Read More

New to map-making with Google tools? Last week we focused on how you could get started by creating a map of your organization’s offices with Google Maps My Places. After walking through My Places, I mentioned Google Fusion Tables, another powerful Google mapping tool. One of the many applications of this tool is that you can import a spreadsheet and turn it into a map for easy publishing on the web. Fusion Tables is especially useful to people who have more than just a handful of locations to plot on a map, or who want a more interactive map that allows users to filter locations or other complex tasks.

A great example of a nonprofit that benefits from using Fusion Tables is MarinSpace, an organization dedicated to helping Marin County nonprofits improve the quality of their workspaces. MarinSpace regularly looks at nonprofits’ locations to understand where these organizations work in relation to each other. From mapping their locations, they can make co-locating suggestions and identify gaps in community services. They’ve even found that sometimes there are clusters of organizations that don’t realize they are a block away from each other and could be sharing knowledge and resources. Executive Director Shelley Hamilton had been using My Maps to map all this data. After learning about Fusion Tables at a Google Earth Outreach workshop in February, Shelley started using it to map nonprofits and is enthusiastic about how easy it is to use: “Once you have your info in Fusion Tables, a couple of clicks and boom, there it is!”

Nonprofits in Marin Map by MarinSpace

Who doesn’t like a little instant gratification? Let’s get started on our own map, shall we?

Before you start:

• You’ll need to have a Google Account to use Fusion Tables, so create a free account if you don’t have one.
• Prepare a dataset with location information to import into Fusion Tables. You can use comma-separated files (.csv), Microsoft Excel files (.xls, .xlsx), an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), Keyhole Markup Language (.kml) or data already in a Google Spreadsheet.

1. Go to http://www.google.com/fusiontables/ and log into your Google Account.
2. Click the New Table button to get a drop-down menu and choose Import Table.
3. Specify the file you’d like to upload. For this example, I’m using a sample Google Spreadsheet of my nonprofit’s locations with a column for each type of additional information that I want to associate with the locations.

Once you’ve selected the file click Next. The next two steps allow you to select which columns you’d like to import and add attributes. Proceed through the steps and click Finish.
4. You will now see your data displayed as a table.

Fusion Tables tries to recognize columns with locations during import and automatically categorize them as location data. You can skip ahead to step 5 to try this out, but if for some reason Fusion Tables didn’t recognize the correct location column, you’ll need to set it manually. To set the locaiton column manually, click Edit, then Modify columns. Select the appropriate column and set type to Location. Save your changes.

5. You are now one step away from your map! Click the Visualize menu and select Map. Fusion Tables should now geocode the location information in the column you’ve specified and create your map.

6. Now the fun really begins. You can use the options above your map to customize your info windows and make them more appealing (add links, select which fields appear, etc.). You can make your info window content more rich by including images, videos, data charts and more. Next you might want to configure your placemark style by changing their color or icon, or using one of the other style options.
Note: If you have polygon or line data in a GIS shapefile or KML file, you can also add and style in Fusion Tables. Just import your KML file the same way you imported a spreadsheet, or use shapescape to import a GIS shapefile.
7. Once you are satisfied with your map, click Get embeddable link for the code to embed it in your organization’s website.

If you’d like step-by-step instructions, you can find them in the Google Earth Outreach "Fusion Mapper" tutorial. Once you’ve mastered the basics, there are a many more things you can do with Fusion Tables. Check out the Google Fusion Tables Example Gallery and the tutorials in the Fusion Tables Help Center for inspiration and guidance. To add options for users to search your map or use a drop down menu to filter results on your map, check out the FusionTablesLayer Builder.

I hope this Fusion Tables map primer will help get your mapping creative juices flowing! For more tutorials and resources, see the Google Earth Outreach website.

Posted by Raleigh Seamster, Google Earth Outreach Team

A lot has been written about how important it is for nonprofits to have a presence on the Internet. While social media outlets offer new opportunities to communicate online, websites remain a primary way that organizations engage people on the web. A well-designed website that is frequently updated with interesting content can attract many unique visitors every day, so nonprofits dedicate significant resources to the development and maintenance of their websites. More visitors to your website means more people know about your organization and that’s a good thing, but should you expect more from your website? Yes ...Read More

A lot has been written about how important it is for nonprofits to have a presence on the Internet. While social media outlets offer new opportunities to communicate online, websites remain a primary way that organizations engage people on the web. A well-designed website that is frequently updated with interesting content can attract many unique visitors every day, so nonprofits dedicate significant resources to the development and maintenance of their websites. More visitors to your website means more people know about your organization and that’s a good thing, but should you expect more from your website? Yes!

Websites are a powerful marketing tool for nonprofits, so it is important to measure and understand their impact on your organization’s bottom line. Measuring is the easy part thanks to Google Analytics, a free tool that provides detailed information about your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Within Google Analytics you can define and track customized “Goals” based on visitor actions that are valuable to your organization. Example goals for a nonprofit would be online donations, event registrations, and mailing list sign-ups.

Once you’ve set up goals and Google Analytics has begun gathering data to measure them, it’s time to think about how the data should be analyzed. A good starting point would be using the data to determine which of your website goals provides the most value to your nonprofit. Knowing that information can help you decide how resources (e.g., programming hours, AdWords credits to drive traffic) should be allocated in the future. Let’s look at how you could calculate the value of the following goals: online donations, event registrations, and mailing list sign-ups.

Valuing donations made via your website is easy if you use Conversion Tracking in your AdWords account. Installing a Conversion Tracking code snippet on the “Thank You” page will enable you to track the number of donations (i.e., conversions) and their dollar value. If you prefer not to use Conversion Tracking, you can use Google Analytics goals data and data from your online payment processor to determine the average online donation amount. Divide the dollars donated via your website during a month (week, quarter, etc.) by the number of people who triggered your donation “goal” in Google Analytics and the result is your average online donation amount. What about finding the average value of a visit to you donations page, since not every visitor makes a donation? To find the average value of a visit to your donations page, divide the dollars donated via your website during a month (week, quarter, etc.) by the number of people who visited your donations page during that time period.

Average Online Donation =

Total Online Donations/Total # of Online Donors

Avg. Value of Visit to Donation Page =

Total Online Donations/Total # of Donation Page Visits

Determining the value of online registrations for events depends partly on the event’s purpose. If the event is a fundraiser that designed to raise money primarily through ticket sales, then the methods we used to value online donations will work well. However, what about events that use ticket sales and an auction to generate revenue? We already know how to calculate the value of the ticket sales, but how do we determine the portion of auction revenue driven by your website? Cross-reference your list of auction participants and their winning bid amounts with the list of people who signed-up online. All of the auction revenue from people who registered for the event online can be attributed to your website. So, the average value of a visit to your event registration page is the total revenue generated by that page divided by the number of people who visited it.

Avg. Value of Visits to Events Page =

Ticket Revenue + Auction Revenue/Total # of Events Page Visits

Finally, we are faced with the challenge of figuring out what a mailing list sign-up via your website is worth. The solution is similar to how we determined the portion of event auction revenue driven by your website. You’ll need to cross-reference your donor list with the list of people who signed-up for your mailing list via the website. When a donor appears on both lists, then some or all of that person’s donation should be credited to your website. The portion of the donation that is credited to the website could depend on how much time has passed since the mailing list sign-up and/or how much contact your development staff has had with the donor in the interim. The average value of a mailing list sign-up on your website is the total revenue generated (i.e., donations made) by people who signed-up during a month (week, quarter, etc.) divided by the number of sign-ups. Similarly, the value of a visit to your mailing list sign-up page is the total revenue generated by that page divided by the number of people who visited it.

Average Value of Visits to Sign Up Page =

Total (or % of) Donations from people signed up via your website/Total # of Sign Up Page Visits

If you’d like more information on how to use Google Analytics please visit this website or follow their blog here.

Posted by Sam Franklin, AdWords Team

New to map-making with Google tools? Start out with a simple and useful application of Google mapping technology. Give your website visitors a quick visual overview of where your organization works with ...Read More

New to map-making with Google tools? Start out with a simple and useful application of Google mapping technology. Give your website visitors a quick visual overview of where your organization works with Google Maps My Places. Creating a map via My Places takes only minutes to make, but can leave a lasting impression on someone who is interested in your organization’s geographic scope.

Map of American Councils for International Education’s offices around the world.

Map of Conservation Biology Institute’s projects.

Here’s how you can get started:
1. Go to maps.google.com and sign in to your Google Account (look for the link in the upper right-hand corner).
2. Click on the My Places link next to Get Directions under the search box. A list of all the maps you've created (or will create!) with My Places should appear in the left-hand panel.
3. Create a new map, and add a title and description, such as “Where We Work”. Set your map’s privacy settings. Don’t forget to click the Save button!
4. Now we’re ready to start adding offices! Let’s say one of your offices is in Washington, D.C. You can add it manually using the placemark icon to drop and drag a placemark on the map, or you can search for the address and add the location with the Save to Map link.
5. You can change the icon color or shape; or add text, pictures and video to your placemark by simply clicking the placemark in question when your map is in edit mode.

6. Now that you’ve got the hang of it, add your other offices!
7. Once you’ve finished your map, you can share it with others by clicking Link for the direct link and the HTML code that lets you easily embed it in your website.

If you’d like step-by-step instructions for the above, you can find them in the Google Earth Outreach "Creating Maps Using My Maps" tutorial.

If creating your first map with My Places whets your appetite for more, there’s plenty of other ways you can get creative with My Places for outreach and campaigns. You can create a map showing drop-off locations for donations like this one from Mother’s Milk Bank at Austin or a map that shows where those donations went and resulting impact on the recipients like this map showing bicycle donations to Africa from Kona Basic Needs/Kona Bike Town. Using the polygon tool (right next to the placemark tool), you can draw the districts in which your organization provides services or highlight where donor funds are going. 300 Acres did just that with a map that showed how each donor’s contribution went to save 300 acres of the Amazon Rainforest. This campaign raised over $100K in just 60 days and succeeded in buying and saving the forest from destruction.

300 Acres’s map

If you have more than just a handful of offices or project sites, or you want a more interactive map that allows users to filter placemarks or perform more complex tasks, you might want to think about using Google Maps API or Google Fusion Tables to create your map. Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of this blog post, which will describe how you can use Google Fusion Tables for mapmaking.

Posted by Raleigh Seamster, Google Earth Outreach Team

Last year we asked participants in the Google Grants program to submit surveys about their experience with Google Grants, AdWords and other products. With the responses we received, we were able to glean a bit of insight into the industries that make up the non-profits in our program and would like to share those insights with you for the purposes of creating your own benchmarks and metrics in this ...Read More

Last year we asked participants in the Google Grants program to submit surveys about their experience with Google Grants, AdWords and other products. With the responses we received, we were able to glean a bit of insight into the industries that make up the non-profits in our program and would like to share those insights with you for the purposes of creating your own benchmarks and metrics in this monthly benchmarking series.

This month we’re featuring the Disease, Disorders & Medical Disciplines category of the non-profit industry. Look to future months for other NTEE non-profit categories.

Grantees in the Disease, Disorders & Medical Disciplines industry were most likely to track “website traffic” as their most important metric, state "reaching new constituents" as their main mission objective served via their Grant and state "raising awareness" as the main marketing objective served via their Google Grant.

With regard to the performance of their Grants AdWords account, they received an average of 25% of their total site visits from their Grants AdWords account and an average of 53,000 conversions over the last year (11/2009 - 11/2010).

Of those surveyed, 9.2% of Disease, Disorders & Medical Disciplines organizations who responded to the survey report that they currently use an agency, SEO or SEM to manage their Grants AdWords account.