Getting the full $10,000 from your Google Ad Grant

The Google Ad Grant gives qualified nonprofits $10,000 a month in search advertising. In practice, most grantees spend $300–$1,000 of it. The grant doesn't roll over — every unspent dollar simply evaporates.

Three culprits show up again and again: campaigns limited to brand-name keywords nobody bids against; the grant's own compliance rules (a 5% click-through floor, required conversion tracking) quietly pausing accounts; and nobody owning the account after the intern who set it up moved on.

The playbook that works: build campaigns around the questions your audience actually searches — not your organization's name; wire up conversion tracking so Google's algorithms have something to optimize toward; and review search terms monthly. It's unglamorous work. It's also $120,000 a year in reach, free, for the ministries willing to do it — or to hand it to a team that does it every day.