This is the guide from Google you/we should follow to a T when applying for the Google Ad grant: support.google.com/grants/answer/1689506?hl=en
Applications can easily be rejected and it’s a hassle to deal with Google when that happens.
The following notes are hopefully a helpful complement to this guide from Google:
- You need to get accepted into Google for nonprofits first.
- Every campaign needs at least two ad groups, every ad group needs to have two ads, every ad needs to have two sitelinks.
- You can’t use single word keywords unless they are branded. When applying it’s best to not use single words.
- Definitely do not put in credit card information even if prompted.
- To avoid confusion, you can sign out of all Google accounts, create a new gmail, give it access to your Google for Nonprofits account, and apply with this.
- Apply for the Google Ads, not Adwords Express – at least to start. You can run a test later.
- You should set up conversion tracking. It can be easily done via linking Google Analytics if you already have it set up there.
- The grant isn’t intended be used to directly promote websites that are not owned by your nonprofit, even indirectly – e.g. a landing page should not as a goal redirect users to just one other website. You probably see any issues unless you’re pretty blatant about funneling traffic to just one other website on a page, but be especially careful when applying. If you do have other owned websites though, you can ask Google to include it in the grant after the application.
Conclusion
Applying for the grant is more about showing Google you know how the grant works than having an optimized campaign. It’s likely best to start with just one max click search campaign, with a 2$ max cost for the clicks, and give it the full $329 budget, targeting the your nonprofit’s target geographic area. And then, once accepted, think about targeting cities, a max conversion campaign and possibly separating the nuclear and climate change keywords into separate campaigns. After getting the grant you might want to try to migrate some or all of the keywords to a max conversion campaign until hopefully the budget is maxed out.