DigiActive.org

Tool: Google Grants

Google has begun offering free AdWords to non-profits through a program called Google Grants. The program allows non-profits in the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK to post cause-related AdWords for free. These keyword-based ads can be used to promote the organization itself or a cause which the organization supports. (Here’s a short video about how AdWords works and here’s a long video that gives more detail)

Using AdWords for advocacy is not new, For example, if you oppose torture in Egypt, you could request to buy the words “torture” and “Egypt” and then an ad promoting your anti-torture campaign would appear whenever anyone searched these words on Google. The problem is, the Google Grants program is no available in Egypt, so the Egyptian NGO would have to buy the words outright (which could get quite expensive) or could apply through an NGO in one of the countries listed in the previous paragraph.

Also, the granting process is loooooooong. Google will let you know within 6 months if you have received a grant, and by then the issue you are trying to campaign around may be resolved or may have moved in a completely different direction. So, Google Grants are good for NGO’s in a handful of countries who are not running time-sensitive campaigns. This is a really great thing for Google to be doing. I just wish that they would make is more accessible to activists in developing countries and would allow grants to be reviewed in a more timely fashion which makes the ads more meaningful for time-sensitive campaigns