Google Ad Grant management
Up to $10,000 a month in free search ads, run to Google’s rules and tracked so you can tell what it actually did.
Used by nonprofits including Marin Promise Partnership and Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
The grant comes with program rules, and they are enforced by deactivation rather than by warning. These are the ones that cost nonprofits the account most often.
Google measures the account's click-through rate across all campaigns together, every month, and enforces the floor by switching the account off rather than by warning you.
Below 5% for two consecutive months deactivates the account. New accounts get a grace period before it applies.
The grant requires conversion tracking that works and records conversions. An account with a tag that has never fired does not satisfy this, however well the campaigns read.
Tracking must be installed and actually recording, not merely configured.
Single-word keywords and overly generic terms are not allowed, and low quality score keywords have to be cleared out rather than left paused in place.
Keywords scoring 1 or 2 out of 10 must be paused or removed. Single-word keywords are prohibited, with a short list of exceptions such as your own brand terms.
There is a required minimum structure, and thin accounts built in an afternoon usually breach it without anyone noticing until the account stops serving.
At least two active ad groups per campaign, at least two active ads in every ad group, and active sitelink extensions on the account.
Campaigns must target the places you actually serve. Untargeted campaigns are a compliance failure as well as a waste of the grant.
Targeting has to reflect the locations the nonprofit operates in. No fixed number.
Google asks every grantee to complete a survey each year. Missing it is one of the quieter ways accounts get switched off.
Once a year, and it is easy to miss. No fixed number.
If your account is already suspended, reinstatement is part of the work rather than a separate engagement.
The grant is worth up to $10,000 a month. Between the bid cap the program imposes and the thin account structure most nonprofits inherit, the majority use a small share of it.
Unspent budget does not roll over. Every month a grant goes underused, the difference is gone, and the gap between what you were given and what you used is the real cost of leaving the account unmanaged.
Valid conversion tracking is a condition of keeping the grant, not a best practice attached to it. An account that records nothing is out of compliance however good the ads are.
A conversion action exists, a tag was installed once, and it has never fired. It passes a glance at the interface and fails the only test that matters, which is whether a number ever arrived.
An account optimising toward conversions it cannot see will spend the full grant on whatever is cheapest. The budget goes out and nothing identifiable comes back.
The tracking setup is included. It is the part of this we are best at, and it is not an upsell.
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