How the Google Ad Grant Can Drive Results

by Tara Moradian  |   |  Google Ad Grants  |  2 comments

4 min to read ✭ Learn how the Google Ad Grant can drive results for your nonprofit .

Community Boost is so happy to help amazing organizations scale their impact with the Google Ad Grant day in and day out. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the incredible difference leveraging this resource makes for all nonprofits across the board. Now, it’s time we share some truly great findings with a few different organizations that we have worked with! Let’s dive into an overview of what the Google Ad Grant is and how it has helped nonprofits like All Hands And Hearts, Moms In Prayer International, Days For Girls, and To Write Love On Her Arms.

 

What is the Google Ad Grant?

The Google Ad Grant is $10,000 of in-kind advertising that Google gives to eligible nonprofits for FREE every month. Yes, you read that right. Google gives away $120,000 each year, and has been helping nonprofits all over the world for the past sixteen years. Today, over 35,000 nonprofit organizations are utilizing the Ad Grant and are implementing Google Ads into their marketing strategy.

With over 3.5 billion searches happening on Google every single day, the Google search engine brings thousands of new website visitors to these organizations’ websites. What does that mean? Well, it means tons of nonprofits are acquiring more donors and volunteers for their cause as well as harnessing increased event ticket sales, strengthened awareness, and generally, a deeper understanding of their mission overall.

Once you apply for the Google Ad Grant, you will find out if your organization is approved in less than a week. Once you get approved, your Google Ads account will be credited $10,000 to spend on advertising through the platform each month.

 

All Hands and Hearts

About:

All Hands and Hearts lives out its mission to help families recover faster after natural disasters through volunteer and community engagement. By using their “smart response” strategy, All Hands and Hearts is able to efficiently and effectively address the immediate and long-term needs of communities impacted by natural disasters. In September 2018, the organization raised over $450,000 from more than 1,000 donors online to support disaster relief efforts in North and South Carolina after Hurricane Florence entirely flooded the Northern American states.

 

At a Glance:

To better understand All Hands and Hearts’ donors, we started by working with the marketing team to install transaction-specific conversion tracking on their Classy tools.

Tracking each unique online donation is an important tactic as it helps the Ad Grant account learn how to better target high value donors.

By running a Maximize Conversions bidding strategy along with a Maximize Clicks strategy, the Google Ad Grant was able to drive $15,000 in 90 days and the campaigns saw a 109% increase in conversions.

Not only does leveraging the Google Ad Grant support nonprofit missions, but understanding what strategies to test out within it is key.

To learn more about All Hands and Hearts’ experience and their Google Ad Grant Case Study, click here.

 

Marketing Goals:

Quickly raise money for disaster relief

Increase online visibility & brand awareness

After the Ad Grant:

5x increase in average donation value

89% decrease in cost-per-conversion

$15k donations raised over a 90 day period

 

Days For Girls International

About:

Days For Girls is an organization increasing access to menstrual care and education by developing global partnerships, cultivating social enterprises, mobilizing volunteers, and innovating sustainable solutions that shatter stigmas and limitations for women and girls. Their movement has reached more than one million women and girls (and counting!) in over 120 different countries.

 

At a Glance:

The Google Ad Grant helped drive over $5,000 in donations through 24 online transactions. Additionally, the Ad Grant drove 10,000 visits to the Days for Girls International website, majorly contributing to the organization’s goal to raise awareness and generate new donors.

 With the help of conversion tracking to track donations, email subscriptions, and eCommerce sales driven by Google Ads, our team was able to figure out how to best optimize campaigns and allocate spend more efficiently. Once we know exactly what search queries had led to meaningful actions on the Days for Girls International web page, we were able to better align conversion goals with their campaign goals.

Also, the Smart Bidding feature within Google Ads was a big player in optimizing and maximizing the Ad Grants budget for Days for Girls.

To learn more about the impact of the Google Ad Grant on Days for Girls International, click here to read up on the full case study with findings.

 

Marketing Goals:

Raise money

Get email subscribers

Increase brand awareness

After the Ad Grant:

$212 increase in the average donation value

$5,000 in donations over 60 days

+400 conversions in 60 days

 

To Write Love On Her Arms

About:

To Write Love on Her Arms is a nonprofit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and invest directly into treatment and recovery.

The organization has donated over $2 million to treatment and recovery and granted funding to 105 unique organizations and counseling practices. Read the full story

 

At a Glance:

To Write Love On Her Arms is a wonderful example of an organization that saw great results after leveraging the Google Ad Grant In just 3 months, Google Ads drove 1,000 purchase transactions which generated over $50,000 in eCommerce merchandise sales. In 1 year, the Google Ad Grant generated over $174,000 in online revenue overall.

We implemented conversion tracking for both donations as well as eCommerce sales, which allowed TWLOHA to track their entire marketing funnel along with the social impact driven by Google Ads. Understanding TWLOHA’s audience and their donation trends was imperative to better targeting and optimizing ad campaigns.

Knowing this data gives insight into the demographics, interests, and behaviors of To Write Love On Her Arms’ supporters, which allowed us to better hone in on a marketing strategy through the Google Ad Grant that would align best with their campaign goals.

To learn more about TWLOHA’s experience with the Google Ad Grant and how the resources impacted their organization, read up on the full case study on Google by clicking here

 

Marketing Goals:

Raise money

Drive eCommerce sales

Increase brand awareness

After the Ad Grant:

$174,000 increase in online revenue in 1 year

1,000 online purchase transactions in 90 days

$50,000 increase in online sales in 90 days

 

Moms In Prayer International

About:

Moms In Prayer International is a faith-based organization focused on impacting children and schools worldwide by gathering mothers to pray. The organization combines the power of prayer with the power of moms, believing that lives and whole communities are changed forever when moms gather to pray.

 

At a Glance:

Our team implemented conversion tracking on the Moms In Prayer International website to track donations, email subscriptions, and prayer group sign ups driven by Google Ads.

Looking at the data helps to identify the opportunities available at hand to convert moms into supporters.

Additionally, utilizing the Maximize Conversions bidding strategy has been a driving force for various ad campaign goals like donations, Ecommerce sales, and/or getting site visitors to opt-in to email.

Implementing Maximize Conversions bidding within the Google Ad Grant drove an increase in the conversion rate and the CTR (click-thru-rate) for every Google Ads campaign, proving to be an extremely effective bidding strategy as it increases bids when a conversion is more likely to occur.

To learn more about Moms In Prayer International and how the Google Ad Grant changed the game for their organization, click here.

 

Marketing Goals:

Raise money

Get email subscribers

Increase brand awareness

After the Ad Grant:

$17,000 in donations in 90 days

1,500 email sign-ups in 90 days

Tara Moradian

2 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Ready to grow your nonprofit?

Our team of purpose-driven digital marketers would love to learn more about your mission and chat about how your nonprofit can drive more online supporters, volunteers, clients & donors.