I’ve met with a number of charities in the last few weeks who’ve wanted to get more traffic to their website.  It might be to raise their profile, to sell their latest idea, or to raise more funds, but it all starts with Google.

What surprises me is that so few charities know about Google Grants a programme for charities which offers $10k of free advertising on Google per month.  That’s right, $120k of funding per year.

Think about it, if part of your charity delivers services which help to fund your good work, such as meeting rooms or conference facilities, then through Google adwords you could shoot to the top of the search listings in your area for these keywords.  You could be spending $10,000 per month in advertising for free.  How many of your for-profit competitors spend that every month?

There’s a few conditions; the programme is only available to registered UK charities and you can’t advertise for financial services or certain other keyword categories.  But these conditions aren’t overly draconian.

This is such a compelling offer, it amazes me more charities don’t know about it.  Of course, getting the offer is only one side of the equation, you need to know what to do with Adwords once you’ve got the grant.  If you need help with using Adwords to drive fundraising into your charity then please speak to us.