Author: Carly Matthew

One late fall day (a busy time of year at any nonprofit), when I was trying to prepare communications for our #GivingTuesday campaign, our grants manager emailed me instructions for getting my Gmail authorized on our new Google AdGrants account.

$10,000  a month! That big boost looked great on our grants budget line. But I was instantly confused and overwhelmed. How would I manage a $10,000 grant when I was already completely inundated with all the one-person communications department responsibilities I already had?

Below is a list of lessons I learned along the way, mostly consisting of stuff I wish I’d known before I began! Getting a Google AdGrant is the easy part. Managing it is a lot trickier.

1. You likely won’t be able to use the full $10,000 every month. 
   Unless you’re a big national nonprofit, or maybe if you have a lot of staff time dedicated to managing your Google AdWords, then you won’t even get close to using your full $10,000 allocation in a month. For a short time, when I had our ads geotargeted at the whole United States, we used about $2,000 per month. Since my director decided that we should only advertise in our state, we are using only about $200 per month (and only because I’ve learned many techniques to better optimize our ads since then!)
2. You can’t just hand the account over to the youngest, most tech-savvy person on staff and expect them to be successful. 
   I’m used to managing email, social media, the website, etc. but this was not a platform where I could just log on and figure it out along the way. Online resources have been easier to find as time goes on, but the person in charge of managing the ads will need to actively seek those out in order to start spending a meaningful portion of the grant.I was embarrassed when, in order to avoid losing the grant, we hired a consultant to work with me every month to give me suggestions and teaching resources. Looking back, I might not have needed paid help if I had known where to find the free training and some good ebooks just for nonprofits, which brings me to number 4…
3. You should start Google’s Academy for Ads training before you even apply.
   And you should probably start this training before you apply for the grant (and lose it) so you understand what you’re getting into. If I had known about this when I started, I would have had everything I needed to prepare myself instead of avoiding digging into the daunting task of learning Google AdWords on my own for a month until I received a warning we would lose our grant if I didn’t increase our click-through rate.
4. Nonprofits with the Google AdWords grant have to fit specific requirements.
   And the requirements have changed over time, so you’ll need to pay attention to any important email updates from Google and news surrounding the subject. You can find the exact requirements in Google’s policies, but I’m going to break them down:- Your overall account must have an average click-through rate of at least 5% every month.
   – You must use geotargetting (and of course you should!) for your service area.
   – Each campaign must have two ad groups and each ad group must have two ads.
   – Keywords must have a quality score of two or higher.
   – Ads should have at least two sitelink extensions.
   – One-word keywords are a no-no.

If you’re responsible for communications at a nonprofit or small business, you know there will never be enough time to do everything. Maybe your organization has already gotten its feet wet in digital marketing. Maybe you’re the first person to make a digital marketing effort and you’re just wondering where to start.

No matter where you are, there are a million tools and only so many hours in a healthy workday. I created this list so you can start by checking off the essentials and create a solid foundation no matter how your communications grow next.

[ ] You have an email subscriber list that you send messages on a monthly basis, at a minimum.

[ ] When someone subscribes to your email list, they receive an automated welcome email.

[ ] You utilize free communications tools that will help you get your message across more efficiently.

[ ] You are on the social media platform that is most relevant to your audiences.
*The platform that works best for one of your audiences may not be the best platform for another. Consider tailoring your strategies for various groups, testing, then re-evaluating later.

[ ] You utilize free and low-cost webinars and local workshops to stay up-to-date on the newest communications practices.
(The communications webinars by Bloomerang and Firespring are my favorites. Kivi Leroux Miller’s are great though often cost money.)

[ ] You have a website that actually works (even if it isn’t beautiful yet).

[ ] Everyone at your workplace, even those in different departments (and especially your board) knows that they are an integral part of your social media strategy and therefore consistently engage with your content.

[ ] You have a social media/content guide.

[ ] You have an editorial calendar (even if only you and the interns are using it right now).

[ ] You make real, fresh, original content to share across all your communications platforms and you know how to repurpose it to get as much mileage as you can.