Non-Profit Storytelling - Part 3: How You Can Use a Story Bank to Make the Best Use of Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits

Google Ad Grants offers nonprofits up to $10,000 in ad money per month to help increase nonprofit website viewers and promote your organization’s impact. The purpose of this program is, according to Google, “to help people connect with causes to make a greater impact on the world (DonorBox).” 

Non-Profit Tech for Good recently hosted a webinar with Eventgroove. They suggested that before you open your Google Ads account, nonprofits should write down their business objectives for the campaign. Some ideas include:

• Help people with your mission
• Drive attendance to your events
• Raise funds for your cause
• Recruit new volunteers
• Grow your membership base

With your objective in mind, here’s a quick breakdown of the concrete steps you should take to move forward with Google Ad Grants and what you need to know (Double The Donation):

• Ensure you meet the Google Ad Grant Eligibility Requirements Eligibility (Nonprofit Megaphone)
• Register for TechSoup.
• Sign up for Google for Nonprofits.
• Fill out the Google Ad Grants application.
• Keep up with your Google Ad Grants account (360 Match Pro).

If your nonprofit meets the eligibility requirements and you follow the steps outlined above, you’ll be well on your way to make the most of Google Ads and will be given the ability to create your first campaign.

Keep in mind that your Google Ad will need to direct the viewer to your website or a page on a domain that you own. And you need to maintain a 5% CTR for two consecutive months or else your account may be temporarily deactivated (Google). 

So, one major decision is: Where, on your site, will you take the person who clicks on your ad?

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One Big Challenge: Spending your funds and maintaining the required clickthrough rate of 5%.

We’ve heard concerns from many nonprofits about using the Google Ad’s because some organizations don't see the results. Most organizations start by linking their ads to a donation page, and focusing ad copy on requests for support through donations. For those already familiar with your mission, and who know your impact, this makes sense. But for new audiences, a “donate now” call to action for ads may be too soon; explaining the lack of ad conversion and low click through rates. A better path to conversion is to first offer insight, knowledge, tools and ideas that engage your ideal donor, future volunteer, or advocate. 

We’ve seen great ideas from experts in the field such as using Google Ads to promote ebooks created by your nonprofit as a way to introduce the organization and your mission. Only after downloading an ebook should you take the next step to ask for financial support. 

What if you showed the viewer of your ad a story you’ve collected from a dedicated volunteer that illustrates how your organization goes above and beyond to help your community?

What if your nonprofit could use the $10,000 of Google Ad money to attract your target audience and increase donations by sharing your story and demonstrating how you live out your values?

Stories are another nonprofit resource that you can share prior to requesting donations. Use your ads to invite prospective donors to learn more about the impact of your work, to hear stories from donors, volunteers, even your own staff. Use stories to show what happens in the field and behind the scenes to inspire new donors to support your mission. You can easily create a call to action that drives people to a library of impact stories before you invite them to support your cause.

In summary - we believe that using stories will help you main a required clickthrough rate of 5% or above. So, how will you collect these stories and have them at the ready to use in ads?

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How to Build a Story Bank for Nonprofit Advertising using Google Ad Grants

GoodSeeker is a digital library built to easily collect, organize, and share positive impact stories to boost engagement, recruiting, and fundraising. This is our recommended playbook to collect more impact stories and testimonials that can help optimize your Google Ads campaigns. 

1. Use GoodSeeker to request, give, and collect stories in a central location. 
2. Use tags to organize your stories based on your values, impact themes, volunteer skills, etc. 
3. Use the Storyboard Builder to create unique story feeds that you can embed on your website to emphasize themes that are most important to targeted audiences. 
4. Create compelling ads that link to storyboard pages on your website. 

💡 Idea: Create 3 different Google Ads using 3 different GoodSeeker stories, or pages on your site with a feed of embedded stories collected from specific audiences (i.e volunteers, legacy donors, board members, etc.). Focus your ad copy on “seeing the full story” to increase your click through rate, and then invite them to donate, follow you, etc. Story first, donation second.

Remember to focus on the conversion metric to see which ad and related stories are converting best. Do not try to spend all of the $10K at once (Nonprofit Marketing Strategies).

Centralize the stories that you’ve collected in your GoodSeeker story bank, whether they’re video, photo, or text based, and have them ready to use at any time for Google Ads, in your newsletter, social content, donor outreach, etc. 

There are some great courses and coaching programs that exist to help you become a nonprofit marketing master. We recommend Community Boost's Accelerator Program to nonprofit leaders to learn the most current and effective strategies to help your nonprofit develop. One of their sayings is, "It's like having a digital marketing genie on speed dial!"

GoodSeeker CEO Erik Ayers shares, "Joining the accelerator gives you access to experts, peers, and guides to help you get up to speed on how to leverage it, while avoiding some of the mistakes people make. I had the opportunity to learn about the accelerator and found that the resources available to nonprofits with a limited budget are pretty extensive. Love the fact that there’s 1-on-1 coaching and that it’s really geared to helping nonprofits find new ways to grow.  And for some that means leveraging Google Ad Grants in a very strategic way."
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We found their Youtube channel full of valuable videos. Check them out!

Interested in discussing the topic of Google Ad Grants and GoodSeeker stories and how you can get started with this method? We’d love to chat!

‍Additional Resources:

• Double the Donation - Google Ad Grants Eligibility: A Guide to Getting Started
• PDF by Classy - The Nonprofit’s Guide to Google Ad Grants
• The Whole Whale - The Nonprofit Guide to Managing the Google Ad Grant

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Check out the other articles in our series:

Part 1 - Who to ask for impact stories as a nonprofit

Part 2 - 12 Key Moments When You Should Ask for Stories

Part 3 - How to use GoodSeeker stories Optimize Google Ad Grants

Part 4 - How to find nonprofit storyteller ideas from your nonprofit CRM

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MEET GOODSEEKER:

Our story software makes it extremely fast and easy to collect, manage, and share impact stories for volunteer recruiting, fundraising, and more. Easily encourage donations and improve your SEO to grow your organization.