The 5% click rule
Out of every 100 people who see your ads, at least 5 need to click. Drop below that and Google can suspend the account. Vague, broad keywords are the usual cause: lots of views, hardly any clicks.
Up to $10,000 a month in free ads, mostly unspent.
You run programs your community needs, and Google will help people find them: verified nonprofits get up to $10,000 a month in free search ads. Most self-managed accounts leave almost all of it unspent, according to Getting Attention. If a volunteer set yours up years ago and nobody’s logged in since, you’re in good company. We handle Google Ad Grant management for nonprofits in Indianapolis and across central Indiana, and we start by finding out where your account actually stands.
Four questions, answered in one call.
The Ad Grant checkup is where we start with every nonprofit, and it costs nothing. Bring the login if you have it. A hunch that somebody applied back in 2019 works fine too.
- Are you eligible? Google decides through Google for Nonprofits. We check your organization against it instead of guessing.
- Is the grant active, or did it quietly lapse?
- Has the account been suspended? If so, which rule tripped it.
- How much of the $10,000 did you actually use last month?
You leave with a straight answer to all four and the one fix that matters most. Some take that fix and run with it themselves. In our book, that’s a win too.
Faith-based and community organizations are welcome. Google has its own verification path for some faith-based groups, so we confirm eligibility during the checkup rather than promise it here. The checkup is also the front door to the rest of our work with nonprofits, from donor lists to board reports.
Why grant accounts get switched off.
Google gives this money away with strings attached. Miss one and the account can be suspended, sometimes for months before anyone at the organization notices. These 4 catch people most.
Keeping the account active
Someone has to keep the account active and compliant, including the annual program survey. Google can suspend an account that falls out of the rules, sometimes without notice. It sounds trivial. It’s exactly what slips when the person who set it up leaves.
Conversion tracking
The grant requires you to count something that matters, like a donation or a volunteer sign-up. Skip it and you’re out of compliance. Set it up and you finally see what the ads bring in.
Keyword and ad limits
No single-word keywords, so “charity” or “food” on its own won’t fly. And the grant only pays for text ads on Google search. No YouTube. No banner ads.
Here at CPC, we think the Ad Grant is the most valuable free marketing a small nonprofit can get. It’s also the most neglected.
Same grant. Very different month.
Every organization gets the same ceiling of up to $10,000 a month. What changes is whether anyone tends the account. Left alone, it drifts: an annual survey nobody remembers, a click rate that slides, a grant that quietly goes dark. Looked after, the same ceiling turns into donors, volunteers, and people finding the programs you run.
Don’t get us wrong, we’d love to hand you a number. But you won’t hear a dollar target from us until we’ve seen your account, and we’d rather under-promise on this one.
The month, written out.
Honestly, most of this is unglamorous. Pruning keywords and rewriting ads nobody clicks. It works because it happens every single month, and cleverness has very little to do with it.
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First month
We audit the account, or apply for the grant with you if you don’t have it yet. Then we rebuild the campaigns around what people in central Indiana actually type, and set up conversion tracking that counts donations and volunteer sign-ups.
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Every week
We watch the click rate and pause anything dragging it toward 5%.
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Every month
We log in, write new ads, cut keywords that rack up views without clicks, and send you a one-page report in plain English. You’ll see how much of the $10,000 you used and what it brought in.
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Around your calendar
GivingTuesday. Year-end. The spring volunteer push. The gala nobody can find parking for. Campaigns shift to match what you need that season.
If you want the board to see it all in one place, the monthly numbers feed the dashboard we build through GA4 and analytics, with Ad Grant traffic sitting right next to donations and sign-ups.
Donors, yes. Volunteers too.
The grant usually gets pitched as a fundraising tool. We think its best use is finding people. Someone in Fishers looking for Saturday volunteer shifts. A parent on the east side searching for an after-school program near home. Each of those is a search, and the grant can put you in front of it for free.
Volunteers matter here because they’re getting harder to find.
So we usually build separate campaigns for the people you serve, the volunteers you need, and the donors who fund it. Each group searches differently, and lumping them together is a fast way to sink your click rate.
The nonprofit rate, stated plainly.
Google pays for the ads. You pay for the management. Ad Grant management runs inside our published monthly retainers of $1,200, $2,400, or $4,800 a month, and nonprofits get a reduced rate on each one. The pricing page explains how the nonprofit rate works.
You get the same team as every other client, under the same 8-client cap. The rate is lower because nonprofit budgets are smaller and the work matters. Three months minimum, then month to month.
The account stays registered to your organization. If you ever leave, it leaves with you.
This may already be fundable. United Way of Central Indiana runs a Capacity Fund for capacity-building grants, the kind that can pay for marketing help. If a capacity grant could cover this work, we’ll help you write the case for it.
What development directors ask first.
Is my nonprofit eligible for the Google Ad Grant?
Google decides that, through Google for Nonprofits, and the program is built for verified charities such as 501(c)(3)s. Faith-based and community organizations are welcome, though Google runs its own checks for some of them. We confirm your eligibility during the free checkup instead of promising it on a web page.
Why did our Ad Grant account get suspended?
Usually one of two rules. The account’s click rate stayed under 5% for two months running, or it broke another Google rule, like missing conversion tracking or the annual survey. All of those are fixable. The checkup tells you which one tripped it, and getting the account back on is our first job if you hire us.
Does the Google Ad Grant cost anything?
The ad spend is free. Google covers up to $10,000 a month in search ads, and nobody sends you a bill for the clicks. What costs money is the time to run it well: a staff member’s hours, or our retainer at the nonprofit rate.
Can we manage the Ad Grant ourselves?
Yes, if someone on staff can give it a few focused hours every month and enjoys this kind of puzzle. Our guide to the nonprofit Ad Grant walks through every rule. The usual failure is that person moving on and the account going quiet.
Will the Ad Grant bring in donations?
Some. We think the bigger payoff for most small organizations is volunteers and newsletter sign-ups, who often become donors later. We count every one of them, so you can show your board exactly what the free ads did.
How much of the $10,000 did you use?
Book a discovery call and ask for the Ad Grant checkup. Bring the login if you can find it. You’ll hang up knowing where the account stands and the one fix to make first, whether or not we ever work together.