Help a Non Profit with 10k month budget

Hi guidetothegoodlife,

You instincts are correct, in that non-profits can definitely benefit from professional and competent campaign management.


Google grants for non-profits will provide up to $10,000 per month in advertising, even more in some cases, but that is not the only limitation.

I would not totally trust the numbers you find on Spyfu because they are extrapolations based on relatively small samples of data, and as such tend to be highly inaccurate. That organization may already be using a substantial amount of their grant allotment, or not, Spyfu is not precise enough to answer such questions.

Having said that, it is not unusual for many participants within the Google grants program to use far less than full grant allotment. There are specific limitations within the program that prevent them from wasting the grant money. Since many participants within that program may end up competing for a limited number of search queries, grant recipients often have difficulty using the full grant allotment, there just isn't enough relevant search queries to go around for all the non-profits.

Where profession campaign managers can help out is by crafting better performing ads, optimizing campaign structure and bid management, as well as nearly all other optimization techniques used for managing commercial advertisers' campaigns. If you learn how to be a great commercial account manager then you will have the skills to help out the non-profit organization you have in mind.

Please understand there is a steep learning curve in mastering AdWords campaigns. You can make a lot of very expensive mistakes in your journey. You need to put some serious time and effort into learning this craft before you approach an organization with an offer to manage their account.

I just want to help them. I am not sure what is going on with them. They are getting 0 results and just said they use 9k of the budet (that's what their IT person said) something. It looks like they are bidding on very generic keywords. If you could PM maybe we can talk about a plan for them and approach them with your services.

One problem is that $10k per month is a lot of money and if you stay with relevant keywords, more often than not, there is just not the search volume available to spend it. So they go generic which doesn't help because it's not relevant. I've consulted with a non-profit and told them I didn't see how they would be able to spend the grant, not unless they bid on unrelated terms which would not be in their best interest. I've managed a non-profit campaign for a short time and in their case, it was easier but a struggle to reach the $10k.

Also, nice to help a non-profit but would they be able to pay your fee? Assuming of course that you would take a fee. But if you feel they are missing opportunities and can help, great. But don't treat it differently than any other campaign. You have to make the most of their $10k "budget" which means there has to be a return, whatever their goal is, presumably donations. Good luck.