Google's Grants for Nonprofits: Improve your reach & impact

If you're a registered nonprofit and you're not using Google's Grants program, you might want to get on board. I've got lots to say about the benefits of this program, but let's start with these two very appealing benefits:

1. Free Google Ads worth up to $10,000 per month.
2. A designated "nonprofit" channel on YouTube, also free.

For a long time, these benefits have been available to U.S.-based charities but not up here in Canada. That's changed, and Canadian nonprofits are eligible too.

If this is enough to convince you, and you're ready to go apply right this instant, I won't stop you - here's the link to the application form. But if you want more details first, read on.

Let's start with the free advertising. Google sells the text-based ads that appear alongside their search results (brand name: AdWords) via an auction-like system: you select the keywords you want to advertise on (e.g. if you're Covenant House Vancouver, you might want to show up on search results pages for searches like "homeless youth", "homelessness Vancouver", "at-risk youth Vancouver", and so on), and you tell Google how much you're willing to pay per click - perhaps 5 cents, maybe a dollar, maybe more. The more you're willing to spend, the more likely it is that your ad will appear at (or near) the top of the ads, and on the first page of search results.

There's an art to choosing the right keywords, of course, and Google has some tools to help you here. You'll benefit greatly from taking a trial-and-error approach, and by crafting the text of your ad very carefully to be a) relevant to the search results on which it appears and b) enticing enough to attract traffic.

In any case, the premise of the Google Grants program (more details here) is that they will allow you to bid up to $1.00 per click, and they won't charge you a penny - and you can "spend" up to $10,000 a month for your free ads. It's a great deal, with no financial risk to you that I can see. (If you know of any, please leave them in the comments.)

OK, on to benefit #2: your own branded "channel" page on YouTube. YouTube (which is owned by Google) has their own nonprofit program aimed at helping charitable organizations improve their reach & support online activism and fundraising. The primary benefits of their program are:

• Your own "channel" page (like this one from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), which can be branded to coordinate with your other online communications channels.
• The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout "Donate" button (this isn't for everyone, as you may have your own online donation software you want to use to ensure that your contacts are kept in one place);
• You'll be included on YouTube's nonprofit channels and nonprofit videos pages
• And perhaps most interestingly, they provide you with the option to add a call-to-action overlay on your videos, to drive traffic to your online campaigns.

If you're using YouTube at all, this is well worth pursing. Full details on the YouTube Nonprofit Program are available here. And you can apply with the same Google for Nonprofits account you use for AdWords.

And if you're not using YouTube yet, here's a great post from Socialbrite on why you should be.

There's more, too - Google Earth for nonprofits, Google Apps for nonprofits… the list goes on.

Here's that application form once again. Highly recommended.