Google Ad Grants for Small Charities
Everything a small UK charity needs to get, keep and make the most of a Google Ad Grant. You'll find out whether the grant suits you, get approved, follow the rules that keep your grant active, track the results that matter, build and write a campaign, bid and optimise, and report to your trustees with a simple monthly routine.
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Everything a small UK charity needs to get, keep and make the most of a Google Ad Grant. You'll find out whether the grant suits you, get approved, follow the rules that keep your grant active, track the results that matter, build and write a campaign, bid and optimise, and report to your trustees with a simple monthly routine.
The course has 8 modules, each with a short video, a written lesson, an exercise, a quiz and at least one worksheet (13 worksheets in all, in Word and PDF).
Who this course is for
Comms leads, fundraisers, trustees and volunteers in small UK charities, including people who have never used Google Ads.
Course content
Module 1: Is Ad Grants Right for You?
Google Ad Grants gives eligible charities free advertising on Google Search every month. It can bring people to your services, your volunteer roles and your donation page, but it comes with rules, it takes time to run well, and it isn't the right fit for every organisation. This module explains what the grant really is, what it's good for, who can get it in the UK and which popular beliefs about it are wrong, so you can decide with your eyes open whether to apply.
about 60 minutes of reading, plus a 40-minute exercise.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain what the grant gives you: the monthly amount, the daily cap, where the ads appear, and how grant ads relate to ordinary paid ads.
- Identify the jobs Ad Grants does well for a small charity (services, volunteers, donations, awareness) and its honest limits.
- Check whether your organisation is eligible in the UK, including the exclusions and the less obvious cases (CIOs, CICs, hospices, churches and hosted projects).
- Spot the common myths about Ad Grants and say what Google's own pages say instead.
- Judge whether your organisation is ready to apply now, or what to fix first.
Module 2: Getting Approved
Getting an Ad Grant is not hard, but it is a chain of steps run by different people (Google, and its verification partner Goodstack), and one wrong move, such as creating your own Google Ads account, can cost you weeks or money. This module walks you through the whole route in order: the Google for Nonprofits account, verification, getting your website ready, activating Ad Grants, and setting up access so your charity, not one person, controls the account.
about 60 minutes of reading, plus a 60-minute exercise (an audit of your website and a tracker you keep up to date while you wait for each approval).
What you'll be able to do
- Describe the full route from "no account" to a working Ad Grants account, who reviews each step, and how long Google says each step takes.
- Request a Google for Nonprofits account (or access to an existing one) and get through Goodstack verification without avoidable delays.
- Audit your website against Google's Ad Grants website policy and fix the problems most likely to cause a rejection.
- Activate Ad Grants correctly, without creating a Google Ads account yourself.
- Accept the invitations after approval, find your 10-digit customer ID and opt in to the emails Google uses for programme notices.
- Set up access so at least two people in your charity are administrators, and give any agency or volunteer the right level of access.
Module 3: The Rules That Keep Your Grant
Google gives you up to $10,000 USD of free search advertising every month, and in return it asks you to follow a short list of rules. Most grant accounts that get switched off break one of the same few, usually without anyone noticing until the ads stop. This module explains each rule in plain English, shows you how to check your account against them, and gives you a monthly routine that keeps you safe in about 20 minutes.
about 65 minutes of reading, plus a 60-minute exercise in your grant account.
What you'll be able to do
- Name the eight rules in Google's Ad Grants compliance guide, and say which ones can switch your account off.
- Find and fix keywords that break the single-word, generic and Quality Score rules, and set up an automated rule that pauses low Quality Score keywords for you.
- Work out your account's click-through rate (CTR) for a month, and bring it back above 5% if it slips.
- Check your campaigns meet the structure, geo-targeting, conversion tracking and survey requirements, and that your ads stay within your charity's mission and Google's wider advertising policies.
- Know what to do if your account is deactivated, including how to request reinstatement.
- Run a monthly compliance check using Template 4: Monthly compliance checklist.
Module 4: Measuring What Matters
Google expects every grant account to track real actions people take on your website, and the account's bidding depends on that tracking to work at all. This module helps you choose the actions that genuinely matter to your charity, set them up through Google Analytics 4 or the Google tag, get the key settings right, and stay on the right side of UK consent rules. By the end you'll know your tracking works, because you'll have checked it.
about 60 minutes of reading, plus a 60-minute exercise on your own account and website.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain why Ad Grants requires conversion tracking, and what Google counts as "valid" tracking.
- Choose meaningful conversion goals for your charity, and recognise the ones that must be categorised "Other" and kept out of your Conversions column.
- Set up conversions using the route Google recommends (importing GA4 key events) or the alternative (the Google tag on a thank-you page), including phone calls of 30 seconds or more.
- Choose the right settings for each conversion action: goal category, count, value, and primary or secondary.
- Explain how Google's consent policy and Consent Mode apply to UK websites, and what basic and advanced Consent Mode mean.
- Check that each conversion action is recording, and spot the warning signs of broken or inflated tracking.
Module 5: Keywords and Campaign Structure
Most grant accounts that struggle do so because of how they were built: one or two baggy campaigns, vague keywords and ads shown to the wrong people in the wrong places. This module turns your charity's mission into a clear set of campaigns and tightly themed ad groups, then fills them with keywords that follow the Ad Grants rules and match what real people type into Google. By the end you'll have a campaign map and a keyword list ready to build in Module 6.
about 65 minutes of reading, plus a 75-minute exercise on your own charity.
What you'll be able to do
- Turn your charity's mission into a small set of campaigns (brand, services, donate, volunteer, information) and decide which matter most.
- Decide whether each campaign should target a local area or the whole UK, and set locations in line with the Ad Grants geo-targeting rule.
- Break each campaign into tightly themed ad groups, each with its own ad and landing page.
- Find keywords that match what people search for, using search intent, your own knowledge and Keyword Planner.
- Choose match types and check every keyword against the single-word, generic and Quality Score rules.
- Build negative keyword lists that keep your ads away from searches you can't help.
Module 6: Writing Ads and Building a Campaign
This is the module where your plan turns into ads people can actually see. You'll learn how Google's responsive search ads are put together, how to write headlines and descriptions that earn the click, which assets to add (including the two sitelinks every grant campaign needs), and how to check that each ad lands on a page that keeps its promise. Then you'll build a Search campaign click by click, and look honestly at when Performance Max is worth trying.
about 75 minutes of reading, plus a 90-minute exercise in which you write your ads and build your first campaign.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain how a responsive search ad works, its character limits, and what ad strength does and doesn't tell you.
- Write headlines and descriptions for one ad group that match the searcher's intent, use your keywords and give a clear next step, pinning only when there's a real reason.
- Plan sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets, including at least two sitelinks that go to different pages (not your homepage).
- Choose a landing page for each ad group that matches the ad and meets the Ad Grants website policy.
- Build a compliant Search campaign: goal, campaign type, networks, locations, languages, budget, bidding to start, and the EU political ads question.
- Decide whether Performance Max makes sense for your charity yet, and list the assets you'd need.
Module 7: Bidding and Optimisation
Once your campaigns are live, the work changes. You stop building and start tending: choosing the right bid strategy at the right time, keeping your click-through rate above the 5% the programme requires, reading what people actually searched for, and saying no to changes that would hurt your account. This module gives you a calm, monthly way to do all of that without breaking what already works.
about 65 minutes of reading, plus a 60-minute exercise in your own Ad Grants account.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain the grant's bidding rules, including when the $2.00 USD bid limit applies and when it doesn't, and choose between Maximise clicks and conversion-based Smart Bidding.
- Decide when your account has enough conversions to switch to Maximise conversions or Maximise conversion value, and make the switch safely.
- Find the keywords dragging your click-through rate down and fix them, using Google's own method.
- Use the search terms report to add negative keywords and spot new keyword ideas.
- Review Google's recommendations, and switch off auto-apply for anything that could break the grant rules.
- Explain what the move from Dynamic Search Ads to AI Max means for a grant account, as of October 2026, and when to leave your campaigns alone.
Module 8: Reporting, Routine and Growth
A grant account that is set up well can still drift: keywords get paused, a thank-you page breaks, the survey email lands in a former colleague's inbox. This final module gives you the habits that stop that happening: a one-page report your trustees will actually read, a 30-minute monthly routine, and a calendar for the year. It then looks outwards, at when a paid account alongside the grant makes sense and at the other Google for Nonprofits benefits you may be missing, and finishes with a 90-day plan so you leave the course knowing exactly what to do next.
about 60 minutes of reading, plus a 65-minute exercise.
What you'll be able to do
- Produce a one-page monthly Ad Grants report for trustees that shows results (conversions), the value of the grant used, click-through rate and compliance status, without jargon.
- Run a 30-minute monthly routine that keeps your account compliant and improving.
- Build an annual calendar that covers the programme survey, regular health checks and your charity's own busy seasons.
- Decide whether a paid Google Ads account alongside your grant makes sense, and how to test one sensibly.
- Identify which other Google for Nonprofits benefits (Workspace, the YouTube Non-profit Programme, Maps Platform credits) are worth activating for your charity.
- Write a realistic 90-day plan for your account, with named owners and dates.
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