I love helping nonprofits improve their online visibility.
Over the years, I’ve worked with dozens of nonprofits, and regardless of their cause or size of their organization, many of them struggle with outreach to donors and volunteers.
The conventional wisdom is often is that nonprofits don’t have the time, staff, or budget required to consistently and effectively reach their target audience. While it’s true that any good marketing requires some effort, there are several programs available to nonprofits, which can make a world of difference.
The most notable is Google for Nonprofits, a free program Google offers to eligible 501c3 organizations. There are a bunch of benefits to the program, but the two biggest are:
- Google Ad Grants account, which provides up to $10k/month ($329/day) in paid search ads. These are the all-text ads that appear at the top of the search engine results page when you search for something on Google. Typically, with for-profit businesses who are running paid search ads, each ad click could cost somewhere in the $1-5 range (or even more expensive depending on the industry).
Since the cost of each ad click is money going to Google anyway (it’s how they’ve made their billions!), giving nonprofits an in-kind budget allowance of $10k/month is pretty easy for them to do.
However, most nonprofits are ecstatic to have this budget since it can translate to more website traffic, more awareness, and more donors or volunteers for their organizations. - G Suite for Nonprofits account for the entire organization, which includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.), and Google Meet screen sharing and conference calls.
- At Causeway Digital and The Happy Beast, I already use G Suite and happily pay Google $6/user/month for all these services. However, with the Google for Nonprofits program, you get everything for free.
- G Suite for Nonprofits also allows you to have an unlimited number of email addresses at your own domain name (e.g. [email protected]) which can be nicer and more professional than a standard, free Gmail address.
Other benefits of the program include the YouTube Nonprofit Program and credits for Google Earth and Maps.
For the ongoing benefits it can provide, applying to the Google for Nonprofits program is my top recommendation for any nonprofit.
Applying to the Google Ad Grants program and getting everything set up can take some time and effort, but once launched, many Grant accounts can provide a significant, ongoing flow of website traffic with minimal maintenance.
For DIY folks, Google provides some good tutorials, but if this sounds overwhelming, just shoot me an email and I’m happy to provide an estimate and talk through the process.