San Francisco — Developing awareness and attracting Web site traffic can be very challenging besides being losing finances, which is even greater for non-profits organizations. Google Grants program is a scheme that offers free AdWords advertising to such non-profit organizations since the past couple years, has recently introduced some new changes to the program which affects not only the application process, but also the next steps of how to get the account up and running.
Apart from few default Ads for a handful of non-profitable organizations, these Ads are usually displayed when there is no suitable AdWords ad available for searchers. Google selects Ads randomly for its Google Grant scheme.
Google labels it as: “In-kind advertising for non-profit organizations”
“The Google Grants program helps organizations partaking in our philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts.”
Designed for 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, Google Grants is a unique in-kind advertising program. It harnesses the power of our flagship advertising product, Google AdWords, to non-profits seeking to inform and engage their constituents online. Google Grants has awarded AdWords advertising to hundreds of non-profit groups whose missions range from animal welfare to literacy, from supporting homeless children to promoting HIV education.
Google Grant recipients use their award of free AdWords advertising on Google.com to raise awareness and increase traffic.
But now, as though it looks like that Google has decided to place more responsibility on the 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations to earn the $120k in free PPC advertising and frankly this heralds a good news! In fact, Google’s generous gift of $120,000 in free yearly advertising, makes any extra legwork on behalf of the nonprofit or search marketer “no big deal”.
The new changes to the program are described below:
The Application Process Update:
The noteworthy update to the form is concerning the required field of an NTEE Number. What does that means? Well, according to Google, “it is the ‘National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities Code‘, created by the National Center for Charitable Statistics; is a categorization system for nonprofits that divides the nonprofit world into categories.”
“In order to recognize this code, the non-profit must own a Guide-Star.org Account, and once you have registered and filled out of the information required by Guidestar, you will be assigned an NTEE Code. If the non-profit already has a Guidestar membership, all that needs to be done is perform a search on your EIN number and the NTEE code will be visible to cut/paste into the Google Grant Application form.”
A Google Grants committee comprises of Google employees is responsible for selecting award recipients. Each non-profit organization awarded a Google Grant receives at least three months of in-kind advertising.
PLEASE NOTE: If you mistakenly put the wrong NTEE code into Google, the application may be automatically cancelled, so be careful.
Ultimately, Google suggests that the non-profit create their own standard Google account and fill out all of the required fields (basic account creation including the #ID) and once the non-profit has identified and “checked off” all of the information needed by Google, the non-profit then has to email Google that they are ready to go live.
Nevertheless, Google has taken several steps to enhance and automate the Google Grant Process and it makes complete sense to the Search Marketing Geek. It is hard to ignore the troubled economy nor the changing state of the job market and Google taking steps to improve their own process for this program should not be looked at as a road block to increase the amounts of Grants, but educate and put it back on the non-profit to initiate the Free gift.