Google for Non-profits and Google Ad Grant for Indian NGOs to Engage More Donors

With the current social situation in the world plagued by poverty, conflicts, hunger and rising inequality, nonprofits are on their feet to address these issues and expand its work across various regions to make the maximum impact. Technology is a powerful enabler for social change and its role cannot be ignored in the present century. For the nonprofits to make greater impact and effect in their social cause, the Goggle for Nonprofits program stands as one of the best options.

The Google for Nonprofits program is a lucrative opportunity that provides eligible organizations a social platform to spread its work and garner more support through aid and partnerships. It offers access to Google products and tools that can help nonprofits find new donors and volunteers, work more efficiently, and get supporters to take action. It is a free program where Google gives away their premium services at no cost and gives access to a collection of its finest applications that might otherwise be too expensive for non profit organizations.

This program is yet to reach to all countries in the world but India has been lucky in this matter.

Google Tools

Using the features of Google technology in this program, one can make their work easier, create intensive and visible impact and extend its reach. A collection of premium Google applications are being offered in this program free of cost to the organizations that meet the eligible criteria.

• G Suit for Nonprofits
• Google Ad Grants
• YouTube Nonprofits Program
• Google Earth and Maps
• Google Donation Tools

In India, the first four features are being offered in the program which this article mentions in details.  

Eligibility Criteria

To avail the free services in the Google for Nonprofits Program, organizations should come under the following eligibility criteria in India:

• Must be registered as a charitable, non-profit organization.
• Must be currently registered with BigTech, TechSoup Global's regional arm. TechSoup is a non-profit that provides other nonprofits and library with technology that empowers them to fulfil their missions and serve their communities.
• Must be registered societies, trusts, or Section 8 (formerly Section 25) companies; and hold a valid registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA).

In addition, the organizations that do not fulfil the criteria and hence cannot avail the services are:

• Governmental entity or organization
• Hospital or health care organization
• School, academic institution, or university (philanthropic arms of educational organizations are eligible). For information about Google's programs for educational institutions, please visit Google for Education.

The Products Available for Indian NGOs

In India, the Google for Nonprofits program is yet to be explored fruitfully by the non-profit organizations. This report hopes to make the NGOs aware of the program and utilize it for their and the greater community’s benefits.

Partner: 

In India, NASSCOM Foundation is the local partner of the TechSoup Stock donations program in India, and forms part of the global TechSoup Technology Donation Program, through which a group of corporate donors provide technology product donations to charitable non-profit and nongovernmental organisations around the world. Its vision is to leverage Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for empowering and transforming the lives of the underserved and promote social development. NASSCOM Foundation's BigTech program endeavours to build the capacities of the non profit sector.

Benefits of Available Applications:

G Suit for Nonprofits is the most widely constructive application that allows effective management of one’s organizations, especially when the work is divided between office and field or the organization has regional or national branches. It helps for more efficient collaboration with the set of safe, integrated applications such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar and Hangouts Meet. The feature has various up gradations but in the Nonprofits Program, it offers the G Suite Basic for free.  It includes unlimited Gmail accounts that ends in one’s domain, 30GB of storage on Gmail and Google Drive, a cloud-based document-sharing and creation tool, along with 24/7 support for any technical issues that may be encountered by the nonprofits with these features and admin access over all the organization’s accounts.

Google Ad Grants is the most influential application that offers $10,000 USD worth of free ads every month for the online advertising of the organizations and provides them access to tools to help build effective campaigns that can display on Google Search when people look for information related to the nonprofit. This creates opportunity to recruit more volunteers, catch attention of more donors to attract more funding and share impact stories globally. By increasing the frequency of appearance of one’s ad, it increases the visibility of the organization and the probability of its work being noticed across various platforms, thus increasing the success rate of the organizations.

YouTube for Nonprofit Program provides a platform that caters to more than 1.5 million people who use YouTube every month. It enables the organization to reach out to a huge audience, and show them their work, impact stories and events through the visual medium, thus engaging the audience and also creating empathy in them. It reaches out and motivates a global audience and helps in engaging the next generation to magnify one’s cause.  

Google Earth and Maps have aided in creating convincing data visualizations to track and share one’s organization impact. Through the Google Maps Platform, it assists people to locate and track community programs and resources happening near them. The mapping tools also offer a wide array of dynamic features, such as the ability to take supporters on location via virtual tour.

Application Process: 

Organizations which fulfil the required criteria can easily apply for the program and let the benefits pour in.

• Register for the BigTech Donations Program by signing up as an individual.  This will allow one to participate in the community by posting on blogs. Once signed up, verify your account and then register your organization.
• The next step is to fill the application form that will require information about the organization like Charity registration number, Operating budget, and IT PAN number of organization, FCRA number, and Mission statement.
• NASSCOM will contact the organization if they require any documentation to verify the status, budget, address, or activities.
• Once all the information is verified, NASSCOM will confirm the organization’s eligibility status within 7-10 working days of receipt or less.
• Once the BigTech account of the organization is approved, one needs to generate validation tokens in their account. A validation token is a unique code that a person uses on behalf of an NGO that has been validated by BigTech and which will be used to access products and services intended for NGOs. For more queries regarding Validation Token, please visit the Link.
• Once the application is approved, one needs to apply for each of the programs individually which can be easily done by going through their links given above in the report.

Documentation for Non-Profits:

List of documents required for availing software from Indian Donors: Quick Heal, Busy InfoTech, and Eagle Conferencing.

1. Registration certificate:

a)     Society Registration certificate OR

b)    b) Certificate of registration under companies’ act OR

c)     c) Trust Deed

2. 12A & 80G certificate

3. IT PAN of organization

4. Organization website OR Annual report of past 2 years OR Mission statement

Why should Indian nonprofits avail the program?

With zero cost, this program offers benefits to the nonprofits that help them in serving their social cause better.

The G Suite provides with features that help for effective management and connection among all the members of the organizations. It is easier to share information, data, and progress of the ongoing and potential projects among all the members, thus keeping everyone up to date. Besides, creating emails with Google apps gives users the familiar Gmail UI, while keeping one’s Nonprofit’s data inside the organization.

The Google Ad Grant can be said to be literally offering nonprofits an empty billboard at the busy main street, free of cost. It gives $10,000 worth of free money a month to spend on fundraising via pay-per-click (PPC) advertising that refers to the text ads one sees while searching Google.

• Visibility: One of the key goals of nonprofit organizations is to expand their reach and raise awareness among people. And since Google has been the most popular search engine in the world, advertising the nonprofit company will gain greater online visibility across the goal. It shows the search ads to people who are searching Google for nonprofits and helps one to reach people who were previously unaware of the cause or the organization.  
• Ability to Represent Oneself: By bidding on branded keywords and branded ads, one can control Google’s search results page. So when one searches through particular words that relate to the nonprofits’ cause, the search results pop up the nonprofits work and organizations’ listing, thus making it difficult for viewers to ignore it. Contrary to organic search results of Google, by using this feature, the nonprofits can determine themselves which keywords are relevant to one’s goals and objectives and can bring users to their website.
• Power to Control Traffic: It gives power to the organization to determine which page of the organization’s website the viewers will be directed to with one click of the ad. The organic Google search often directs the viewers to the home page, but with this feature it can direct the traffic to particular targeted landing pages that improves conversion rates i.e. effectively convert anonymous traffic into leads, customers, donors etc.
• Donor Engagement and Fundraising: Marketing to potential donors via Google searches can be done via this tool. By taking advantage of one’s bid limit ($2 per keyword, or $329/day) to target long-tail keywords, driving specific, well-qualified traffic to every page in one’s non-profit site, the attention of the donors can be better captured. Engaging and captivating ads can also include call extensions so that it becomes easier for potential volunteers and donors to contact the organization.   Fundraising is given an effective and easier channel through this medium. It makes it easier for people to donate to one’s cause and the simpler the process, the more likely will people donate.
• Awareness of the Cause: It helps in creating awareness around one’s cause and attracting more volunteers and donors for the organization and thus building its online presence.

The YouTube Nonprofit Program recognises the value in video through one’s YouTube channel and thus increasing the donations. Even by collaborating with content creators of YouTube, it offers a platform to reach out to a greater number of audiences.

• The feature provides an excellent medium to narrate one’s non-profit story to get donors aligned with their cause. A process can be built to create engaging videos for each project that the organization works for. 
• The power of video storytelling always has a greater effect than mere words. To create empathy in the viewer’s heart and to create awareness of a particular cause and the organization’s work in it, it serves as an efficient medium, especially to the younger generation who constitute the major audience of YouTube.

The above points showcase why Google for Nonprofits should be undertaken by all organizations that meet its eligibility criteria. The program empowers the nonprofits organizations to promote their mission and initiatives on the platform of Google and Indian NGOs should grab this opportunity at the soonest for making a greater change.

For further query regarding the program, please visit their support page and get all the relevant information to avail the advantages and spread your social work.   

This article has been written by Sweta Chakraborty, Research Associate, NGOBOX and CSRBOX. You may reach out to her at sweta@csrbox.org.