Google Ads for Nonprofits
Google Ads for nonprofits: more recurring donors, not one-time clicks.
Nonprofit giving has no storefront and no map pack. It's a search, a landing page, and a decision to trust your cause with a card number. Google Ads, paired with the Google Ad Grant, gets your organization in front of that search. It cannot make a cause page that fails to say where the money goes.
- 10% of your ad budget, $600/month minimum
- No contracts, month to month
- 30-day guarantee, you don't pay if it doesn't work
What runs, and why
Campaigns built for how people decide to give.
Google Ad Grant search campaigns
Eligible 501(c)(3) organizations can access up to $10,000 a month in free Google search ads through the Ad Grant. We build and manage the grant account separately from your paid spend, so you get that budget for free.
Paid search for terms the grant can't cover
The grant restricts single-word and overly generic keywords, and caps cost per click. Paid search fills that gap, bidding on your organization's name and higher-competition terms the grant account isn't built to win.
Remarketing to site visitors who didn't give
Most people who land on a cause page leave without donating. We bring them back with ads based on general site behaviour, not personal details, reminding a warm visitor that the page they read is one click from a donation.
Performance Max for awareness and appeal campaigns
Around a giving-season appeal or a specific campaign, Performance Max spreads your story across Search, YouTube and Display, reaching people who haven't searched for you yet but fit the profile of past donors.
What Google Ads costs for nonprofits.
The average cost per click
Nonprofits don't have their own line in the 2026 search advertising benchmarks published by LocaliQ with WordStream, so the closest comparison is the All Industries Average: $5.42 cost per click and a 6.64% click-through rate. Your paid search account, not the free Ad Grant, is what this cost applies to.
The average conversion rate and cost per lead
That same All Industries Average shows an 8.18% conversion rate and a $66.69 cost per lead. For a nonprofit, the "lead" is usually a donation, a monthly-giving signup, or a volunteer form, and recurring monthly donors are worth far more over time than a single gift.
The math at a $1,000 monthly paid budget
At the average cost per click, $1,000 in paid search buys around 184 clicks. At the average conversion rate, that's roughly 15 donations or signups. Our fee is 10% of your ad budget or $600 a month, whichever is higher, so at $1,000 you'd pay the $600 minimum. This is on top of, not instead of, the free Ad Grant budget.
The rule that keeps the free budget alive
The Ad Grant is not unconditional: Google requires every grant account to maintain at least a 5% average click-through rate, checked regularly, and an account that falls below it risks suspension. A managed account watches for that threshold; an unmanaged one often loses the grant without anyone noticing until it's gone.
How we set this up for a nonprofit.
01
Track every donation and signup first
Before any ad runs, we connect your donation platform and forms to conversion tracking, so you can see which campaign, and which specific appeal, actually turned a click into a gift.
02
A page for each cause or program
A general "donate" page undersells a specific program. Each major cause or campaign gets its own page that explains the need and the outcome, instead of one page trying to speak for the whole organization.
03
Negatives and search terms, checked weekly
We review the exact searches triggering your ads every week, which matters even more on a grant account, removing broad or unrelated terms that waste clicks and drag down the click-through rate the grant depends on.
Google Ads for nonprofits, answered.
Start by claiming the Google Ad Grant, worth up to $10,000 a month in free search ads if you're an eligible 501(c)(3). Beyond that, most organizations add $500 to $1,500 a month in paid search to cover terms the grant restricts.
The Ad Grant alone is worth applying for, since it's free budget most eligible nonprofits leave unclaimed. Paid search on top of it is worth it once you have a specific campaign or program that the grant's keyword rules can't reach.
A Google Ad Grant search campaign first, since it's free budget, paid search for terms the grant restricts, remarketing to bring back visitors who didn't give, and Performance Max around a specific appeal or giving-season push.
The Ad Grant application and account setup typically takes a few weeks before ads can run. Once live, donation and signup activity usually shows up within the first month, though a full picture of which appeals convert best takes a full giving cycle to see.
For paid search, our fee is 10% of your ad budget, with a $600 a month minimum, and we never mark up what you spend. Managing your Google Ad Grant account is part of the same engagement. No setup fee, no contract, and a 30-day guarantee.
See what Google Ads and the Ad Grant could bring your cause.
Tell us your 501(c)(3) status, your cause and your budget. We'll send back a free proposal within one business day, including whether you qualify for the free Ad Grant.