The following organizations are not eligible:

• • Government organizations
  • Hospitals and medical groups
  • Academic institutions including schools and universities
  • Childcare centers

• • Be sure to select an email address that can be shared throughout your nonprofit (e.g. not your personal email) This email will be used for three accounts: TechSoup, Google for Nonprofits, and Google AdWords
  • The qualification process takes up to 10 days

• • While you wait to be approved by TechSoup, sign up for an AdWords account
  • After signing up, you will likely receive coupons for free credit – DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO IGNORE THIS. If you add these credits, you will have to create a new AdWords account entirely. Just be patient and ignore these emails.

• • Add US Dollar as the currency, regardless of your location or local currency
  • Do not add payment information to your account at anytime, even if prompted by the platform. If you do add payment information, you will have to pay for any charges accrued on your credit card and will have to create an entirely new account.

• • You will be approved by TechSoup via email 10 days after signing up
  • Once approved, log into TechSoup
  • Click on your settings tab in the upper right-hand corner
  • Click “Validation Tokens”
  • Click “Google for Nonprofits”
  • Enter the country that your organization is in and your language preference
  • Select “Already a Member” and log in with your TechSoup credentials again
  • Verify your information
  • Click the arrow for Google for Nonprofits underneath “copy your token and paste it back here”

• • Note: make sure that you are logged into the email that your AdWords account is associated with
  • Enter your AdWords ID
  • Have your Validation Token handy
  • Follow the prompts
  • The approval process can take up to 10 days
  • DO NOT ADD A SECOND ADMIN – Although this option is available, it may prevent your campaign from being approved
  • More info on the application process

• • This can take up to 14 days
  • You will receive an email from [email protected] informing you of your approval – this will link to your Google for Nonprofits account

• • There is a number of great tools associated with Google for Nonprofits, but you must enroll in each of them
  • Enroll in Google Ad Grants
  • This process takes 1-2 days

• • In the meantime, while waiting for your Google Ad Grants approval, start making your ad campaign
  • You must choose Search Network – if you select otherwise, you will have to create a new account entirely. In other words, this must be done from the very beginning and cannot be undone. Bonus Tip: Select “Standard.” If you select “all features,” your campaign may be disapproved
  • Networks: Uncheck the box to “include search partners”
  • Bid strategy: Select “I’ll manually set my bids for clicks”
  • Set keyword maximum cost per click (CPC) to $2.00
  • Daily budget: set limit to $329 USD (the equivalent to $10,000 USD per month)
  • Keywords: although the Ad Grants Help Center encourages you to use all keyword match types (broad match, broad match modifier, phrase match, and exact match), your campaign may not go live with any keyword match beyond broad – in other words, start with broad and add other match types after you’ve been approved

• • Return to your administrative access request email from [email protected] and click the link to your Google for Nonprofits page
  • Click “Enroll” in the Google Ad Grants section
  • Have your AdWords Customer ID (account number) handy
  • This can take 1-10 business days
  • Triple check the above – the approval process can take a long time, even if you miss one small thing on the checklist

• • You will receive an email from Google congratulating you!
  • Log into your AdWords account – there should be a red bar across the top that says, “Your ads aren’t running – To resume serving ads, you’ll need to review and accept your terms and conditions.” Click on “Fix it”
  • Select “Accept” in regards to terms and conditions – your ads won’t run until you accept
  • Announce your new approval across newsletters, social media channels, and/or your donations page – Note: Google does not permit press releases or media outreach for this

• • We suggest contacting Google right away to determine the root of the problem – Although extensive, their troubleshooting guide does not list all possible issues. Bonus tip: contact them via chat to troubleshoot in realtime and save your chat log for future reference, if needed
  • Troubleshoot issues with your Ad Grants account application
  • Are you managing multiple accounts with Google Manager Accounts? Are any of those other accounts paid? If so, you will have to unlink the Ad Grants account from the paid accounts
  • Did you create multiple ag groups and ads with multiple keyword match types? Try submitting your campaign with one ad group, one keyword, and one ad – you can add the rest later

• • Do not change any of your settings listed above – especially Search Network and your billing status. Changing these settings can cause your campaign to stop and require a new account altogether.
  • Log in at least once per month
  • Make a change at least once every 90 days
  • Do not add additional website domains