Google and Salesforce.com have recently formed an alliance to help millions of businesses better leverage the Internet to achieve success, combining the power of AdWords targeted advertising and salesforce.com's customer relationship management (CRM) expertise. As part of this new relationship, Google and salesforce.com are now extending each other's grant recipients the offer to apply to the partnering grant program. As a Salesforce.com Foundation grant recipient, you are eligible for the Google Grants program offering free advertising to select non-profits. Note that organization's must meet the Google Grants program guidelines to receive the Google Grant. On this page, you will find helpful information describing the Google Grants program and how your organization can participate.
About the Program
Read about Google Grants, what the program offers, and how it can be useful to your organization.
What to Expect
Learn what to expect as a Google Grants participant by reading about Google's advertising program, the Google Grants program guidelines, and grantee budget constraints.
How to Get Involved
Learn about next steps and how to apply for a Grant.
| About the Program |
The Google Grants program empowers over 2600 non-profit organizations to achieve their goals by helping them promote their websites via advertising on Google. Google ads appear when users search on Google. For example when you search for "world poverty" on Google, text ads related to world poverty appear on the right hand side. Example: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=world+poverty. When you click on one of the ads, you are brought to the website being advertised.
Organizations that receive a Google Grant are awarded at least three months of in-kind advertising which can be used it in a variety of ways, for example general outreach, fundraising activities, and recruitment of volunteers. They have found much success with the program. For example, the US Fund for UNICEF's e-commerce site, Shop UNICEF, experienced a 43 percent increase in sales over the previous year, while CoachArt – supporting children with life-threatening illnesses through art and athletics programs – has seen a 60 to 70 percent increase in volunteers.
| What to Expect |
About Google's advertising program
Google Grants will give you an advertising grant within the Google AdWords program. AdWords is our online self-managed advertising program where your organization will manage its advertising campaign by creating and monitoring text ads that run on Google. You create ads and choose keywords, which are words or phrases related to your organization. When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results, and people can click on your ad to see your website. You're advertising to an audience interested in your organization because you've created a relevant ad and chosen relevant keywords to describe your efforts. You can edit your ads or keywords at any time.
The value of the advertising that your organization receives is solely dependent upon the performance of its ads in the program. Results will vary; the typical grantee in our program receives just over $300 worth of advertising on Google.com per month. However, this is dependent on many variables including how many times people search on the keywords you choose and whether searchers click on your organization's ads. As a result, we cannot predict or guarantee the value of the advertising that you will receive.
If you have never run ads via an online advertising program, you will want to read the materials that we provide below. Most organizations experience a learning curve in the quest to take full advantage of their advertising grant, so it's important that you have an understanding of the way our advertising program works. Please review detailed information about AdWords, including instructions for creating effective ads and selecting keywords at http://www.google.com/grants/information.html.
Program Guidelines
Detailed information about our program policies is available at: http://www.google.com/grants/policies.html, and please be aware of some important criteria:
- You must have a website, and your ads must link to a page on your website.
- The keywords you target must be relevant to your programs and services.
- Your website cannot display revenue generating ads, such as Google's AdSense program, or affiliate advertising links while participating in Google Grants.
- The on-going management of your advertising campaign will be your responsibility once your account is active.
If you have ever used AdWords as a paying customer, you know that advertisers are charged a certain "cost-per-click" whenever a user clicks on their ad, e.g. 30 cents per click. As a result, advertisers set maximums that they want to pay per click and also an overall campaign budget to ensure they are appropriately spending their advertising dollars.
As a Google Grants recipient, you will be able to participate in our advertising program without necessarily having to pay any amount to Google. However, you should be aware of two important budget constraints on your advertising campaign. These come in two forms:
- The maximum cost-per-click that a Grantee is able to choose is $1.00, and some keywords may not be available to you at this amount.
- Your AdWords account spending will be capped at $10,000 per month in clicks. The majority of our grantees cannot accrue clicks at these spending levels. Should your organization be able to accrue clicks at that level you may be eligible for additional budget (up to $40,000 per month) at a discounted rate.
| Interested in participating in the Google Grants program? | |
