Google for Nonprofits

Multiply your nonprofit donations and leads using Google for Nonprofits

October 20, 2020

What is Google for Nonprofits?

Google for Nonprofits is a program where Google gives Nonprofits or Charities organisations premium services (like $10,000 a month in Ads credits and custom G Suite accounts) for free. If your organisation is eligible, Google for Nonprofits gives access to a collection of premium apps that might otherwise be too hard to afford for third sector organisations.

Google for Nonprofits provides free tools to nonprofit organisations that allow them to improve their efficiency and reach a wider and qualified audience without a big initial investment, convince more supporters to take action or join their cause and tell their story in different online channels.

What’s included in Google for Nonprofits?

Google for Nonprofits is a program that provides free tools to nonprofit organisations that allow them to work more efficiently and reach a wider and qualified audience via free adversting. Defitenily, Google for Nonprofits is a great tool to Turbo-Charge the Mission of nonprofits and charities organisations.

Google Suite for Nonprofits

Description of the program Google Apps for nonprofits

The first product Google for Nonprofits offers is G-Suite for Nonprofits. A must-to-use communication platform for many businesses, and now Google offers premium functionalities to nonprofits, free of charge, or with a big discount to make it affordable.

Only G Suite Basic is available for free under this program. Your nonprofit organisation can get access to G Suite’s document apps, email service, and administration tools but with some limitations.

Is Google Suite free for Nonprofits?

Google’s announcement is clear: nonprofit organisations get access to G Suite Basics for free.

What your organisation gets with G-Suite for Nonprofits program

G-Suite for nonprofits provides your nonprofit organisation with the following tools:

Unlimited Gmail accounts with your @yourdomain.com
Full access to Calendar. This tool helps your nonprofit to coordinate meetings and calls for yourself and your team.
Complete access to apps like Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and more. Your team can collaborate and work together in real time on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
30GB of space for Drive documents and up to 15 accounts of email hosting.
Support to your nonprofit 24/7 via phone, chat, and email
Admin access over all your organization’s accounts
Hangouts video meeting tool. You can host or join video meetings. Anyone with the link can join, also if they are not using a Gmail account or they do not have a G Suite account.

Google apps for nonprofits unlimited storage

The storage for G Suite’s Basic edition is 30GB per user across Drive and Gmail. If you need a higher storage capacity, G Suite’s Business and Enterprise editions have unlimited storage (accounts less than 5 users get 1TB per user). If your organisation is looking for unlimited storage you should apply for a Business Account for Nonprofits (€3,47 per month) or G-Suite Entrerpresite Account for Nonprofits (€7,36).

How to maximise profits of Google for Nonprofits

Create your nonprofit mail accounts in G-Suite

When you want to create mailboxes using the domain name of your website you need to invest in one hosting that allows you to create email accounts. Using Google for Nonprofits your nonprofit does not need to purchase a hosting service to create the email accounts for your team. In average, is a savings of $100 per year.

Create your first website with Sites

Access to Sites tool is also included in your G-Suite for Nonprofits account. You can skip an initial investment in your organisation on a tight budget, but in the long term we recommend you to hire a charity web design agency.

Use Calendars to handle your nonprofit agenda

Your organisation has access to a powerful time optimisation tool for free. Take your time to learn and investigate how to get the most from this app. Calendars can be accessed by everyone in the team and shared, making Calendar an organization-wide planning and scheduling tool. For the time management also alternative productivity tools, in their free versions, like Trello or Asana.

Use Hangouts for your online meetings

One of the things that this 2020 showed us is that nonprofits can work remotely without losing any productivity. Combining Calendars and Hangouts you will have a unique place to manage all your appointments, with a benefit of time saving due the use of unique tool to control everything.

Google Drive for Nonprofits

Google Drive for Nonprofits gives you a place to store all your files, including files created on other services. As we mentioned before, G Suite Basics users get 30GB of storage on Drive to work in the cloud.

Free google email for nonprofits

One of the best functionalities of Google for Nonprofits is that offers you the possibility to get unlimited email accounts with your organisation domain.

Google Suite for nonprofits cost

As mentioned above, Google Suite for nonprofits cost is 0$. Sign up today and get access to the Google Cloud for free.

Additional ways to use it
Improve your daily communications
Connect with people all over the world
All your files in one place

Google for Nonprofits cost savings

Apply to Google for Nonprofits you can save by avoiding investing in:

Google G-Suite Basic price ($5/month)
Hosting Service (around $100/year)
Web Design Service. In adition to your hosting savings using Sites your organisation itself will be able to create their own site. We do not recommend this option, if you really want to implement a solid Digital Marketing Strategy for Nonprofits.
Productivity Tools. By using Calendars and Hangouts you will have access for free to premium functionalities that other paid productivity tools are selling.

Google Ads Grants

Description of the program Google Adwords for Nonprofits

Google Grant is the nonprofit version of Google Adwords, the advertising programme that allows advertisers to pay for results on Google searches. It will give your organisation access to up to $10,000 credit a month in search advertising that you can use to drive awareness, engagement or donations. As a Google Ads Grants Consultants we can help you get on board and maximise your results.

What your organisation gets with Google Ads Grants program

Your organisation gets $10.000 credit a month in free advertising in Google.

Do I get $10,000 a month of cash with Google Ads Grants?

Not quite. You get up to $10,000 a month in free advertising space, which can be used with certain restrictions. Consider it a type of Good-In-Kind that will go directly towards achieving your communications and fundraising goals.

$10,000 per month of in-kind advertising dollars to spend on pay-per-click advertising
PPC ads are text-only and only run on Google.com
Access to the full Google Adwords platform (for advanced users) or access to Adwords Express, for those who don’t want or don’t know how to actively manage PPC campaigns.

How to maximise Google Ads Grants revenue

There are some ways to get the most from your free Google Ads Grants account. Here come some tips:

Optimize your landing pages. If you are advertising a volunteership opportunity in India but if a visitor doesn’t find that information that is looking in less than 1 minute you would have lost an opportunity to convince a possible supporter for your organisation.
Work the Quality Level of your keywords. Google offers you this indicator for one, they want to reward the excellency with more visibility.
Create different versions of your ads. It is good to keep adding, changing or improving your ads to test how small changes can boost your performance. Be curious and do not be shy to try different things.
Synchronize your Google Ads Grants Account with Analytic Goals. Import your goals and audience to get the most of this free tool.

Google Ads Grants Requirements

Nonprofits cannot buy branded keywords they don’t own
Keywords must have at least a quality score of 3 or higher. In this case more quality score means to get more impressions.
Campaigns must have at least two ad groups with a minimum of two ads running in each ad group.
Your Google Grants Account also must have at least two active site-link extensions
Accounts must include geotargeting

How much you can save with Google Ads Grants

You can save up to $10.000 per month which is the limit for this free program for nonprofits.

Google Grants Elegibility

There are certains restrictions and some requisites that you need to know before to apply for a Googe Ads Grants account. You can take our Google Grants Eligibility Test now or contact a Google Ads Grants consultant.

Google Ads Grants Help

As experienced nonprofit consultants, we will guide you through the process, from google grant eligibility criteria to approving, launching and maintaining the programme successfully.

Youtube Nonprofit Program

YouTube is the largest video hosting platform in the world with more than 1 billion active users every single month. If your organisation is into video creation to talk about your cause, YouTube is where you will connect your audience.

For NGOs that see the value in video, the YouTube Nonprofit Program elevates your YouTube channel to the next level and amplifies your donations. It even gives you the ability to plug into YouTube’s vast universe of content creators and develop meaningful partnerships. It will not be easy, but if you find the way to connect and convince some creators to spread the word of your cause it will be all worth the effort.

What your organisation gets with Youtube Nonprofit Program

The “donation cards” and “link anywhere cards” on your channel videos. These are YouTube annotations that can help you to transform your videos into an interactive experience.
No transaction fees on any donations processed by YouTube. A big help to your organisation.
If your channel has more than 1,000+ subscribers you can gain access to YouTube Spaces, Google’s professional production studios located around the world.

How to get the most from Youtube Nonprofit Program

Build a process for creating engaging videos for your nonprofit and upload them to Youtube. Once the video is ready to watch, you can include a donation card at the end. This eliminates barriers to giving as you are connecting directly with your potential donor, and saves your nonprofit the current 3% processing fee.

YouTube is making a big effort to have a great social impact on its platform. Videos that are shareable, informative, and evergreen are the best performers. In case that you are a nonprofit marketer looking for help, YouTube also has plenty of tutorials and style-guides to help you create beautiful video content and boost your perfomance.

The definitive tool to improve the Video Marketing of your nonprofits.

Additional ways to use Youtube Nonprofit Program

Focus your efforts in growing your subscriber count and connect with Google Spaces to create a grand-slam year end appeal video. There is not too much information about how to apply to YouTube Spaces, or how selective they are, but the application form asks if your channel has over 10k subscribers.
Connect with content creators and influencers to get them to put donation cards to your non-profit. Any YouTuber has access to these donation cards, and they can link to any organisation that is on the Youtube Nonprofit Program. Developing a partnership with some influencers will allow to get some donations from the donation cards that they insert on their videos.
Use Google Tutorials and Guides.

How much you can save with Youtube Nonprofit Program

Joining Youtube Program for Nonprofits your organisation will save you to pay donations fee. If you do not join this program, donations through YouTube will charge you the 2.9% + .30 fee other processors charge.

Google One Today

Google One Today is an app designed to connect with potential donors, offer donation matches, and find different nonprofit causes.

Description of Google One Today program

Google One Today it’s a daily-donation, pay-it-forward app that Google developed to increase visibility to nonprofits. For users, the app gives them a nonprofit to consider donating to each day. There is also a “pay it forward” to friends functionality, which basically funds the donation for the friend and prompts them to download the app.

What your organisation gets with Google One Today program

No transaction fees. The total ammount of every donation goes to the nonprofit
Tax-deductible. Donors get a convenient, year-end tax receipt for all their donations
Discreet. Donors contact info is not given to nonprofits or shared.

How to get the most from Google One Today program

This app can be used to reach new audiences, especially for tiny nonprofits or community organizations. As it is a smaller and less competitive platform, a user that is interested in a broad topic like “Education” might have a better chance at finding your local after-school program.

Once they already know about your organisation you can push those new contacts to your website, or get some small donations via the app.

Additional ways to use Google One Today program

There is not yet a lot of information about how to use this platform. Goodbytes.Network as nonprofit consultant is still testing this platform, we hope to provide you more information soon.

How your organisation can save with Google One Today program

It will save you the cost of processing fees, but it takes time and effort to make your projects look appealing.

It is hard to measure how much revenue you can get or to estimate how many donations you can get. In the App Store and Google Play Store, the download count is not huge but it has a lot of reviews. This app can increase visibility into a new population and maybe get some new donors.

Google Earth Outreach and Google Maps Platform

Description of Google Earth and Google Maps for Nonprofit program

This product definitely is not valid for every organisation, but for the right nonprofit it could really change how you do business. Google Earth Outreach opens up Google’s satellite and maps data to nonprofits, enabling them to perform international development work.

What your organisation gets with Google Earth and Google Maps for Nonprofit program

The ability to publish Google Maps on your websites
Access to the premium Google Maps API, which lets you plot sensitive information on a map and keep the data internal
Access Google’s Open Data Kit, which allows you to link deep maps features into proprietary software and applications.
Display customized visualizations and layers over Google Maps

How to get the most from Google Earth and Google Maps for Nonprofit program

There is a good example about how to get the most of this program: the case study with Charity: Water.

They leveraged the Google Maps API to send donors GPS coordinates of where a new well will be built, connecting donors with a specific project to increase perceived impact.

How much your organisation can save with Google Earth and Google Maps for Nonprofit program

While the Maps API is a paid service, the cost is probably negligible since you can access 25,000 maps a day for free. The real value is in Google data sets and being able to integrate them with your applications.

Google for Nonprofits Account

In order to apply for a Google for Nonprofits you should take a few simple steps.

Apply for Google for Nonprofits

Confirm your google account. This is a real simple step where you only have to confirm your email address as the one that will be the admistrator for your google for nonprofits account.
Confirm that you are an eligible organization for google nonprofits. In this step you should confirm to Google that you are not a:
- School, academic institution or university.
- Hospital or healthcare organisation.
- Governamental entity or organisation.
Confirm your country. Google for nonprofits is only available in certain countries.
Get a validation token from Techsoup. In the next point we are going to explain you how to get your validation to proceed with the activation of your google for nonprofits account.

Techsoup Google for Nonprofits

All organizations must be validated as a nonprofit organization by TechSoup or the local TechSoup partner. Once you start your Google for nonprofit application process you will be asked to introduce your TechSoup validation token. You just need to click in the link (screenshot below) to start this process with TechSoup.

Once on the TechSoup website you should register your nonprofit. This is also an easy process, same as registering to any website, where you should follow the process indicated in the screenshot below.

After this, you will be required to follow a normal doble opt-in process and confirm your email account. Once verified, log in into your new account and complete the Tell us About your Organization form. You will be required to include the following information:

Organization Status – Select 501(c)(3) nonprofit
EIN or FSCS ID – Enter your EIN (Employer Identification Number)
Organization Type – Use the dropdown menu to select your main activity
Subtype – Use the dropdown menu to select the subtype

Once done, you will be redirected to a final page with all the details of your organisation. Here you only need to confirm them clicking on the Add this Organization button. Once submitted, you must wait for your application to be validated by TechSoup, this process can take up to 10 business days. In case you missed something during your application process, you may also be asked via email to submit additional information to TechSoup.

What you need to get approved by TechSoup

After you submit your application to TechSoup, you may receive an email from TechSoup saying they need additional documentation to verify your tax exemption. You may will be required to send them this documentation to confirm the status of your nonprofit.

Get your TechSoup validation token

Once TechSoup notifies that your account has been validated, you need to log in to your TechSoup account to obtain your validation token. You just to follow the next steps:

Click the User icon in the top right corner to select Your Account (screenshot below).
Once on the mentioned page, you need to click on Validation Tokens (screenshot below).
The last step here is to click the Google for Nonprofits link (screenshot below).

Then, you will be prompted to:

Identify the country in which your organization is located.
Log in to your TechSoup account.

After logging in, you will be directed to a page that contains your TechSoup validation token. Click Copy, then paste the validation token into the Google For Nonprofits field. Now you are ready to confirm the Google for Nonprofits application process that we started in the previous point.

Complete your Google for Nonprofits account application

With your TechSoup validation token you can already complete the process of signing up for a Google for Nonprofits account.

Log in to your Google account once again to confirm your account and enter/paste your TechSoup validation token (screenshot below)
Once Google has checked your token, review the list to see if your organization is already listed. If not, select My organization is not listed and Create new account.
Then, enter your organization contact details (phone number, website…) and agree to the Google for Nonprofits terms and conditions.

Once Google for Nonprofits receives your submission, you will receive an email from them regarding the status of your application within the next 3 days.

Google for Nonprofits login

The login page for your Google for Nonprofits accounts is https://www.google.com/nonprofits/

If you forgot which Google Account is linked to Google for Nonprofits, your best chance is to try by searching your inbox for the Google for Nonprofits confirmation email. Search for an email sent from: googlefornonprofits-noreply@google.com
If your problem is that you forgot the password to the Google Account that you used in your Google for Nonprofits request, you just simply can reset the password
If you’re still not sure which account you used, request administrative access to your organization’s existing Google for Nonprofits account. Google documentation says that they will come back to you in about 14 business days.

How to contact Google for Nonprofits?

If you have an issue with a service that you have already activated on your Google for Nonprofits account we show the contact options that you have below. In case you are experiencing problems activating your G Suite for Nonprofits account, better check here.

Google Suite for Nonprofits help

Eligible nonprofits can activate Google Suite for Nonprofits or a discounted version of G Suite Business or Enterprise offers through your Google for Nonprofits account. G Suite provide 24/7 customer support.

If your organization is not eligible for Google Suite for Nonprofits, learn more about your options.
If you are having trouble accessing your Google Suite for Nonprofits account or need to create a new account but is not possible because an account using your domain name already exists, fill out this form.

Google Ads Grants help

Check is your organisation is eligible for Ad Grants. If you need help setting up or using Ad Grants, you can request us a Pro Bono Consulting. You can also request help directly from your Google Ads Grants account.

Useful links:

Youtube Nonprofit Program help

If your organisation is not eligible for this program, learn more about your options. Resources for YouTube Nonprofit Program:

Google Earth and Google Maps for Nonprofit help

If your organisation is not eligible for this program, learn more about your options. Resources for Google Maps Platform:

No need to Google it

We hope that you find all the information you need right in the Google for Nonprofits guide that we had prepared for you!

If you are still looking for more information about how to boost the digital strategy of your nonprofit, contact us and we will gladly attend your request.