Nonprofit advertising

Most nonprofits qualify for $10,000 a month in free Google advertising

It is called Google Ad Grants, meaning a monthly advertising credit Google gives eligible 501(c)(3) organizations to run search ads. We handle the application, the setup, and the ongoing management. We also run everything else, meaning paid social, email, content, and the website, the same way we do for any other client. If you have applied before and been turned down, or had an account suspended, tell us, because that changes the approach rather than ending it.

Most organizations we meet either have never heard of it, applied once and were rejected, or were approved years ago and have an account nobody has opened since.

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Where organizations stand

Never appliedwe handle it

Applied, rejectedusually fixable

Approved, dormantfastest to fix

What the grant is, and what it is not

Ten thousand dollars a month, every month, to run Google search ads. It does not expire and it does not come out of anything else you receive. The limits are real and worth knowing before you get excited.

01It is search ads only. No display, no video, no social.

02Bids are capped, so you will not win the most competitive searches against organizations paying cash.

03Google requires the account to maintain a minimum click-through rate, and accounts that fall below it get suspended.

04The account has to be structured a particular way, and most rejections happen here rather than at the eligibility stage.

It will not replace a paid social budget and it is not a fundraising strategy on its own. It is still ten thousand dollars a month you are currently not spending, and for most organizations it is the largest line of unclaimed budget available to them.

What we do with it

Never applied

We handle the whole process. Eligibility check, Google for Nonprofits enrollment, the application, and the account build afterward.

Rejected

The reason is usually the account structure or the website rather than your organization. We find which and fix it.

Approved and dormant

We rebuild it. The most common thing we find, and the fastest to fix because the money is already approved.

After that it runs like any other search account. Keywords built around what people search when they are looking for what you do, ad copy tested against real results, and monthly reporting that ties spend to enrollments, donations, or whatever the outcome is that matters to your board.

The rest of what we run

The grant is search only. Everything we run for a Shopify brand we also run for a nonprofit, and the mechanics barely change. What changes is the finish line. A donation, an enrollment, or a volunteer signing up rather than a sale, so the funnel gets built and measured against that.

Paid social

Facebook and Instagram, where the audience is people who were not searching for you and need to be reached. This is where a real budget goes further than the grant does.

Donor communication, event promotion, and enrollment, built as sequences that run on their own rather than as a newsletter someone has to write every month.

Social content

Something your audience can share, since a supporter forwarding your post reaches people no budget buys.

Brand and website

Where the site is the reason the grant account keeps getting rejected, which happens more often than it should.

What it costs

Ad Grants management

From $1,500

a month, Ad Grants only

Setup

$2,250

application and build included

Ad Grants plus

$2,750

a month, adds email and creative

For the board

The fee is a management cost rather than an advertising cost, which matters for how it gets categorized.

The first ten thousand

Because the grant itself is free advertising, that monthly reach costs your organization nothing beyond the management.

Jeremy puts the numbers in a form you can take straight into a board meeting, rather than leaving you to rebuild them the night before.

Common questions

01Who qualifies

02We were rejected

03Board defensible

04Restricted funds

05Versus other agencies

06Application time

07Suspensions

08Small organizations

Which organizations qualify for Google Ad Grants?

Registered 501(c)(3) organizations in good standing with a functioning website and a valid SSL certificate. Hospitals, schools, and government entities are excluded, though affiliated foundations often qualify where the parent institution does not. Churches and religious organizations do qualify. We check eligibility before anything else, and it takes about a day.

We applied and were rejected. Can that be fixed?

Usually. Rejections rarely come from the organization itself. The common causes are website issues, a missing SSL certificate, an incomplete Google for Nonprofits enrollment, or an account structure that does not meet Google requirements. We find the reason and resolve it rather than reapplying and hoping.

Is this defensible to our board?

That is the format we report in. Monthly reporting shows what was spent, what it produced, and cost per donor or per enrollment rather than advertising metrics that need translating. The grant portion is free advertising, which is usually the easiest part of a marketing budget to justify.

Can we pay for this out of restricted funds?

That depends on how the restriction is written and we are not the right people to rule on it. What we can tell you is which parts of the work map to program delivery, which map to fundraising, and which map to general operations, so your finance lead can make that call with the right information.

How is this different from working with a regular agency?

Most agencies do not handle Ad Grants, because the accounts have compliance requirements and bid caps that make them harder to run than a normal paid account. The rest of the work is the same discipline applied to different outcomes. Donations and enrollments instead of purchases.

How long does the application take?

Google for Nonprofits enrollment usually takes a week or two. The Ad Grants application after that is faster. Building the account properly is the part that takes real time, and we would rather spend two weeks structuring it correctly than have it suspended in month three.

What happens if the account gets suspended?

Suspensions come from falling below the click-through rate requirement or from policy issues, both of which are preventable. If it happens we handle reinstatement. Preventing it is a matter of the account being built correctly and monitored, which is most of what ongoing management is.

Do you work with small organizations?

Yes, and the grant is the reason. An organization with almost no advertising budget can still run ten thousand dollars a month of search advertising, which changes what is possible more than any other single thing available to a small nonprofit.