Managing Your Google Grant with Grant Hensel of Nonprofit Megaphone
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Grant Hensel is the Founder and CEO of Nonprofit Megaphone where he leads a team of experts that help nonprofit organizations manage grant funds from the Google Ad Grant. He is a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and was the Founder of RounddUp App until he sold the company in 2020. Grant was the Marketing Director for CVM, Inc., and worked in Information Management and Analytics for Slalom Consulting. He is the Founder of eTestNotes.com and Encore Resale Store, and the Co-founder of Backbone Local and Viibrant.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Grant Hensel introduces Nonprofit Megaphone and their role in helping nonprofit organizations acquire the Google Ad Grant
What are the qualifications for a nonprofit to apply?
What are some of the benefits of display ads and using Google to promote your content?
Grant describes the vision behind — and the founding of — Nonprofit Megaphone
Grant talks about the importance of gratitude and authenticity when operating a company
In this episode…
What are the most common mistakes a nonprofit organization can make when advertising? What if there was a way to raise more awareness around your organization without the cost of advertising?
For Grant Hensel, reaching more donors begins with digital advertising. Through his company, they help nonprofit organizations apply and maintain an active status with Google Ad Grant, where organizations receive $10,000 a month towards their advertising on Google search. This can drastically increase an organization’s impact and transform more lives.
In this episode of Greater Returns: A Fundraising Podcast, Dennis Hoffman talks with Grant Hensel, Founder and CEO of Nonprofit Megaphone, about how to access grant money to help nonprofit organizations improve their outreach through digital advertising on Google. Grant discusses the qualifications a nonprofit organization needs to meet, why many organizations underutilize the grant program, and why authenticity and gratitude matter.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Grant Hensel’s email: grant@nonprofitmegaphone.com
Sponsor for this episode...
This episode is brought to you by Engage USA.
At Engage USA, we maximize direct mail fundraising efforts for nonprofit and charitable organizations by streamlining processes, providing obsessively accurate data, and delivering personalized and transparent expert caging and commercial lockbox services.
We pride ourselves on being quick to respond to customers. Our systems capture, verify, and balance data in real-time, allowing us to provide our clients with obsessively accurate data and deposits within 24 hours. At Engage USA, we help nonprofits, charities, and political campaigns run more successful fundraising efforts.
So what are you waiting for?
Visit engageusa.com to learn more about our work or contact us today!
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Greater Returns Podcast, where we talk about nonprofit fundraising analytics and how to get better every day. Now, let's get started with the show.
Dennis Hoffman 0:16
Dennis Hoffman here, I'm the host of Greater Returns: A Fundraising Podcast where I talk with top nonprofit leaders about marketing, direct mail, and analytics. I have Grant Hensel from Nonprofit Megaphone. Grant helps charities qualify for receive and manage Google Grants $10,000 a month in free ads on Google. This episode is brought to you by Engage USA. At Engage USA we provide expert caging and lockbox services to help organizations meet their unique fundraising needs. Our proprietary systems capture, verify and balance data in real time allowing us to provide our clients with obsessively accurate data and deposits within 24 hours. State and National charities, advocacy organizations and political candidates come to Engage USA to help their fundraising campaigns become more successful. So what are you waiting for? Visit Engage USA or email info@engageusa.com to learn more. Before I introduce today's guest, I want to give a big thank you to Anthony Ramirez who first introduced me to Grant Hensel. Anthony owns Lincoln Security Services in Chicago, which provides physical security, and has been an ink magazine's list of the fastest growing companies in America four times. Both Anthony and Grant are fellow members of Entrepreneurs Organization. Grant Hensel is the Founder and CEO of Nonprofit Megaphone, an agency that helps charities acquire and manage $10,000 A month Ad Grants from Google Ventures over 500 clients, big and small, he helped promote their organizations and their causes with grants from Google. So Grant, people call you the Google Grant Guy. And the first time we talked, I asked you if Grant was a nickname, or is it really your first name? Because I'm sure viewers are wondering that too. Do you mind if I ask again?
Grant Hensel 2:00
Absolutely. It's tragic. It's actually my middle name, which I've gone by since birth. So it did proceed. My involvement in the Google Ad Grant world but yes, it's it's sad, because it took me three years into this, to realize that that was hilarious, but I can't escape it now. That your Grant the grant guy, it's painful.
Dennis Hoffman 2:19
So let's start with the obvious question. What are Google Grants?
Grant Hensel 2:23
Absolutely. The Google grant program has been around for over a decade. And it gives nonprofits $10,000 a month to spend on ads in Google search. So if you've searched for things in Google, you've probably seen the ads that show up at the top of the page, and their text ads. And typically, when someone clicks on one of those ads, whoever the advertiser is, has to pay Google, you know, from a few dollars to actually a lot of money for that quick. And the way the Google Ad grant works is it allows nonprofits to run ads in those search results. And when someone clicks, Google pays for the quick and it comes out of that $10,000 credit. So it's a great way to reach people who are searching for specific things related to what your organization does, and then bring them to your website,
Dennis Hoffman 3:07
and $1,000 a month, that's a lot of money. How long does it last? The grant
Grant Hensel 3:11
lasts forever. So it's as long as you continue to maintain the requirements, which we can talk through, you will have the grants until the end of time, and Google has not indicated that they will ever close the program. They've been doing it for over 10 years. They love it. And yeah, it goes on forever. It's quite a remarkable opportunity.
Dennis Hoffman 3:30
Because Google knows about you. Does he know that they do? Does he do they know you're out there promoting their grants and, and making money off of them?
Grant Hensel 3:38
Absolutely. So we have met and had a fun opportunity to meet in person. And we've had lots of digital calls with the Google Ad Grants team. It's led by a woman named Michelle, who's extremely talented. And she is actually created, like sort of inspired by us, which is hilarious. She heard about us, like four or so years ago, we went out to California to meet her. And as a result of that, they created a program called the Google Ad Grants certified professionals, of which we are one. And yeah, we chat with them all the time, we've gotten to do some projects with them, which has been really fun.
Dennis Hoffman 4:12
How cool is that? So who can qualify for Google grants in the
Grant Hensel 4:17
United States, the qualifications are being a 501 C three, as your tax status and not being a hospital or a school or government agency. As long as you're a 501 C three, if you're not one of those, and you have like a website that has information on it and is decent, you will qualify. And if you do the application correctly, you will receive the Google Ad grant. It's not like a traditional grant where there are only a few slots, everyone who's eligible and applies correctly will receive it and that's true for another couple dozen countries as well, where it's it's the equivalent of 501 C three status in those other countries.
Dennis Hoffman 4:54
That's, that's really amazing. So 501 C three organizations that aren't doing this or are spending money they don't need to spend and we're leaving money on the table. Absolutely,
Grant Hensel 5:05
yes. And we've done fun videos where we've got $10,000 in ones from from the bank, and like showed how much money it is every month. It's it's a ton. It's a significant opportunity that many nonprofits are not aware of, or don't have the expertise to manage or don't have the time, or maybe they have the grant, but they're not utilizing it very effectively. So it's quite an opportunity
Dennis Hoffman 5:27
is so it's, it's $120,000 with an A shockingly low cost of cost to acquire it. Certainly, yeah, right. Go into your program budget in theory, right?
Grant Hensel 5:37
Right. And it's the way the grant works is, it's almost like a gift card. So you can only spend it on the ads themselves. You basically have a Google Ads account, where there's no payment information in it. And it just gets, it gets to spend $10,000 each month. So you can think of it as whatever your marketing budget is, it's now been increased by that amount. And it's just designated to Google ads in particular.
Dennis Hoffman 6:04
That's extraordinary. So what are the best ways you see nonprofit organizations using the Google Grants,
Grant Hensel 6:09
the best way to think about it is in the context of your website. And this is the conversation that we have with a lot of organizations, because your website determines how successful you can be with the Ad grant, a really good website has lots of content that people in your target audience would be potentially searching for that relates to the work that you do. So if you're like an animal shelter, and you're trying to get pets adopted, you should have articles about like, benefits of adopting dogs benefits of adopting cats, like what the adoption process looks like. And any type of article or page you can have that would like a potential pet adopter would be searching for. That's fantastic, because then you can write ads for each of those pages. So someone Google's like, how much does it cost to adopt a dog? In a perfect world? You have a page on your website that answers that question. And Google can tell like, oh, wow, that's a really relevant answer. And so they will show your ad quite frequently. And you'll get a lot of people coming to your site who are really relevant. So that's the way we think about it. First, think about what are your goals? And then second, think about what content on your website is related to those goals. And then third, create ads to promote that content.
Dennis Hoffman 7:21
So actually, one of my clients is an organization called barcs. And they they help dogs find homes. So isn't isn't isn't the example that could they go online and publish? You know, and could they buy Google grant for use Google to say Humane Society or animal shelter and have themselves come up in those searches?
Grant Hensel 7:45
Absolutely. And what we'd recommend is, since it's essentially free money, target as many keywords, and that's what the technical term is, like, Keywords are the phrases that you're targeting, when people searching Google, target as many of them as as you can possibly imagine. And that makes sense. You just want to do it in a way that, like is relevant. So if you only serve a certain geographic area, like if you serve a specific city, just to target that city. And if you only have cats and dogs, like don't run, you know, ads for horses, but other than that, like anything related to the work that you do, is fair game, and you should totally be advertising on it because, you know, bring people in the door.
Dennis Hoffman 8:25
Absolutely. So in my I live in downtown Frederick, Maryland, which is a historic village. And we have an organization called the downtown Frederick partnership. And they promote, they promote independent businesses restaurants in our town. People come here as a tourist destination. And his point was we have we have hundreds of little shops, a little restaurant, little restaurants, we have one Starbucks, that's the only chain. So in if downtown, and they have events, they help marketing they do community building, how can organization like the downtown Frederick partnership use a Google grant to further their mission?
Grant Hensel 9:05
Yeah, that sounds like a fantastic organization and a fantastic organization for the Google Ad grant in particular. There are a couple ways we serve a number of organizations that sort of promote destinations or events. And those are great to advertise. Because there are lots of different ways that someone might be thinking about it. So someone could be thinking about places to visit, like top places to visit the United States. And you could have an article about how Fredericksburg is one of those places. Or you could have people who are looking for like things to do this weekend. And you can have an article that lists some of the upcoming events or attractions in the area. And you basically go through all of those different iterations of like, who are the people we're trying to reach? What would they be thinking about? Do we have a page on the website? Or could we create a page that relates to that? And then let's promote it for the address and maybe you target maybe target the whole country for some of them like places to visit the United States, you can target Whole country and then maybe target like a smaller surrounding area for things to do this weekend, and so forth. five K's like, I don't know, five K's are done. But that's that's the thing people search for, like five K's this weekend. And so you can have an add on that and link it to the page that explains the 5k. That works really well.
Dennis Hoffman 10:18
I'm gonna send them your way. I think. So are there any differences between Google Grants and paid ads on Google?
Grant Hensel 10:26
Great question. Yes, paid ads can be not only in Google search, but can also be on YouTube or on other websites, like in the form of display ads, which have images, the Google Ad grant is just text ads, and just in Google search results. So that's, that's one difference. There's two others. The second difference is that if an organization is running ads through the Google grant, those ads will always appear below any paid ads. So if someone is paying with real money, they will always outrank you, and then Google Ad grant ads will be underneath that. And so there's some strategy and some creativity and thinking about, like, what are things that are less competitive, that no paid advertiser would be looking at. And sometimes you can, you know, you can compete, that's fine. But that's, that's another sort of thing that you want to be thinking about. And then the third thing is, since Google is giving you so much money for free, there's what's called the compliance rules, which basically say, the best practices that everyone really should be following in any Google Ads account, you have to follow them. So you have to maintain a certain click through rate, you'd have to have, like multiple ad groups in each campaign, you have to use conversion tracking, things like that, to basically ensure that you get the most value out of it, it's things you should be doing anyway. And now it's required, since it's Google's own money.
Dennis Hoffman 11:43
And that's not I mean, so for small organization, that's kind of a, an obstacle, they have to know how to know how to comply with all those rules.
Grant Hensel 11:50
It can be yes. And it's, it's not, it's not possible, like many organizations manage the Ad grant themselves and do it quite nicely. It is time consuming and requires focused attention. And so people like me also exist to help folks to do it. But yeah, it's, it's it takes some effort, but it is typically worthwhile.
Dennis Hoffman 12:13
So Nonprofit Megaphone helps nonprofits to to get the grants to start with you do the application help with the application process, you also manage the grants 100% of the advertising.
Grant Hensel 12:26
Yes. So our ideal client is someone who says, We want to utilize this Google Ad Grant, please make it happen. And we do that. So we get the grant for you, if you don't have it yet, if you had it in the past, and it's been suspended, because no one was paying attention, we'll get it reactivated. And then we will create all the ad campaigns. And we will continue to improve the ad campaigns each week, forever. You basically it is a long term thing, where if you stopped doing it, eventually your account will get suspended. And so we have clients who have been with us for years and years, and we just make their account better every single week, we do check in calls and so forth. And the goal is that the client basically just hears about the good news and hears about how well things are going and doesn't have to do the actual work and keeping up with the changes themselves.
Dennis Hoffman 13:17
They can afford to spend $10,000 a month. It is
Grant Hensel 13:21
yes, it absolutely is the way that Google has structured the program, every single nonprofit gets $10,000. And they've chosen that because it should be more than enough for basically everyone. So if you are a national or international organization that has a lot of content on your website, so you have a lot to promote, you can potentially get pretty close to spending the full $10,000. If you're a smaller organization, maybe you're just in one city or you have a less robust website, maybe you spend three or $4,000, or whatever it is. And the goal is that as long as you're reaching everyone in your target audience, anytime they search for anything related to what you do, you are doing a great job. And whether that's $4,000 or $6,000, it doesn't really matter. Because at the end of the day, it's just Monopoly money, and it's about reaching the people bring to your website, and then having them do something productive, like adopting a dog or coming to event or whatever it is.
Dennis Hoffman 14:14
Sure. So what else can you tell me about Nonprofit Megaphone?
Grant Hensel 14:18
We have a lot of fun. The Google Ad Grant is the only thing that we do. And we're thrilled to serve like 530 Something clients all over the world large and small. And the reason that we do that is because when we started and still today, most of the time, the Ad grant is managed by someone who's not a specialist, either it's person internally who has like 100 other balls to juggle, or an outside agency, that sort of quote unquote specializes in like 60 different things. And the Google Ad grant often slips through the cracks and the program changes like things change, and there's constant work required and 50% of our clients come to us because they've never had it before. And they want to use it. The other 50% have it and are like massively under utilizing it and need help. So that's what we do. We love it. We have a team about 50 people all across the country, and we just eat sleep, breathe,
Dennis Hoffman 15:22
Google Ad grant. And how did you get into this business was a pretty tight specialty.
Grant Hensel 15:27
It's extremely tight. Yes. And the joke is that it's my name and said that, you know, it was destined from birth. I heard about the Google Grant a number of years ago, I thought it was cool. And then I sort of went on with my life. And I've been entrepreneur since I was like, 12 years old. And so anyway, I'm always thinking about, okay, what are ways that we could start a business to be helpful to people. And a couple years after learning about the Ad Grant, I thought, I wonder if there's a business to be had doing just this one thing and trying to do it better than anyone else in the world. We did a survey of like 300 nonprofits and asked them one, have you heard of the Google Ad grant? And 75% said, either No, or we're not using it. And then the second question was, if you could reach people who are searching for you in Google, how helpful would that be? And everyone's very helpful. And so we realize there is, there's an education gap in the market, and maybe someone like us could be helpful. And with with much sweat, and tears, and nine months of waiting to figure out how to sign our first client, Nonprofit Megaphone was born. Nice.
Dennis Hoffman 16:34
And I know before this, you had an app that helped raise money for nonprofits. How'd that work?
Grant Hensel 16:39
Yes. So we had an organization called the roundup app, which has actually been acquired and is continuing to grow and is doing really nice things. The Roundup App allows people to donate their change to a nonprofit of their choice. So you basically it's similar to the app acorns, where your changes invested for your retirement in this year change is kept track of and then donated to a nonprofit that you care about, which was really fun. We sort of created it and launched it, we got almost a roughly 1000 nonprofits on the platform. And it's a software business. So requires like a lot of investment. And so we ended up get having it get acquired by someone who had the resources to take it to the next level. So it's it's fun to see it continue to grow.
Dennis Hoffman 17:26
Very cool. So let's go back to the downtown Frederick partnership on this, I'm going to send them a link to this podcast and tell them they should apply for Google Grants. How much work is it? And how long will it take them? Yes,
Grant Hensel 17:37
it will not. I'll let's assume that they do not have the Google grant yet that their websites in good shape, which is what it sounds like. It will not it will not take much work from there. And we have an onboarding process where we get the Google Ad grant for them. And we set up their website for conversion tracking most nonprofits, their websites not yet set up, who knows there's my pain. But we do those things that typically takes depending on how responsive the organization is able to be like somewhere between one and four weeks. So it can be quick. But you know, depending on how many other things people are juggling, they're just a few things that we asked, like, like, Hey, can you put this little tracking snippet onto the website. And sometimes that's quick and sometimes takes a little while. We then create initial ad campaigns, which will have lots and lots of different ads and keywords, and build all that out into the account. We let those run for a month to see how they're initially performing. And then we do sort of like our first official call, where we share what we've learned what we're working on what's next. And then we do calls every other month with check ins on the off month thereafter. The goal is that should take like an hour to the organization's time up front. And then like I don't know, an average of half an hour a month thereafter. And we're doing all the work behind the scenes to make it happen.
Dennis Hoffman 19:01
So what are the big mistakes you see organizations making once they get a Google grant? Yes,
Grant Hensel 19:06
one of them is the website content. And I have been harping on this a lot because it took us forever to figure out that website content really drives success or failure. So if you have a website with two or three pages on it, and they're all things that people wouldn't be searching for, like, here's how our latest fundraising event went on your blog. Unfortunately, no one is googling that. But they are Googling things to do this weekend. Upcoming events 5k near me, how do I adopt a dog like things like that, that people would actually be searching for. So if you have a lot of content like that on your website, you'll do great. If you don't, we can help you write it or we can give you ideas and you can write it but that that will be necessary. We there are a number of clients that we say we would love to work with you. But to set yourself up for success you need to add to the website and here's some ideas. And we don't want to work with you yet because it won't be successful. So that's mistake number one. Mistake number two is like forgetting about it and just letting it run in assuming that it doesn't need to be monitored, because things change, and then things will break, and then the account will get suspended, and then everyone will be really sad. So we recommend not doing that. The third thing is going after things that are like keywords that are really competitive, and that there's a lot of paid competition for. So I'm trying to think of an example like with like, like, if I'm a if I'm having animals be adopted, like I shouldn't be trying to advertise on things that like pets Petsmart is advertising for, so I shouldn't be, because there's just gonna be a lot of competition. But you know, those are those are few quick things. But it is. Yeah.
Dennis Hoffman 20:51
So you mentioned earlier that schools and hospitals and I know also 501 C fours don't qualify for Google Grants, or the different programs they do qualify for, or they just had a luck.
Grant Hensel 21:03
Sadly, they are out of luck. At this point, from the perspective of the Google Ad Grant, there's Google for Education, which schools can utilize and get, it's either free or discounted Google workspace licenses. But there's nothing like the Ad Grants program that is available for schools or hospitals, unfortunately.
Dennis Hoffman 21:23
So you know, you're both members of the Entrepreneurs Organization. And I know a lot of vO chapters are clients of yours. How are they using Google Grants?
Grant Hensel 21:30
Yes. Which has been really fun. I've been a member VO for years and years, and it's been life changing. And so it's been fun to also meet people like you through and work with some of the other chapters. The way that the chapters are typically using it is they are again, starting with content, putting content on their website. And a lot of this can actually be adapted from like do global, about topics that entrepreneurs would be searching for. So in the pandemic, a big topic was like PPP forgiveness, how does it work, every entrepreneur in the country was searching for that for a period of a couple months. And so we wrote nice articles that explained how that worked. Put it on individual chapter websites advertised that keywords like PPP forgiveness in the geographic area that the chapter served. And then once people came to the site and read the blog post, which is very helpful and informative, it also includes calls to action about like, join a life changing network of fellow entrepreneurs, and, you know, join us for a free event and see what he is like and see what everyone's talking about. And using that to get more people into membership funnels. So same same way as all nonprofits starting with content, reaching the target audience, and then cycling people towards like some sort of call to action or next step.
Dennis Hoffman 22:45
So I produce a podcast for EO membership, actually, also, so fun gonna need to get you to come on to that podcast. That's so fun. Um, so this, he said earlier that this grants available in some other countries, what are the countries? Is it just mostly us? Or?
Grant Hensel 23:05
Yes, there's a couple dozen. I think there's like 30, or somewhere between 20 and 40 additional countries that it's available. And as well, if you go to google.com/grants. That's the page on the program. And it lists all the countries there like Canada, Australia, you know, many European countries, countries and other continents as well. There's a pretty sizable list, which is nice. And you work with companies outside the US. We do, yes, the majority of our clients are in the US. But we we absolutely have an international client base as well, which we love working with. Awesome. Cool.
Dennis Hoffman 23:38
So I have three teenage sons. And we, as as they became teenagers, we found our dinner table conversation getting more and more negative. And we started asking, so I made a rule at our dinner table that we talked about gratitude, and part of our dinner every night we have everybody into my kids. And my husband, I all say something we're grateful for. Let's pretend you're in an awards banquet, the Oscars or the Emmys and you're receiving an award for the amazing work of Nonprofit Megaphone. Who would you think would you would you be grateful for?
Grant Hensel 24:13
Yeah, definitely our team. I say this a lot. And it's so true. Everyone at Nonprofit Megaphone is smarter than I am truly. Especially the people on our leadership team. Amber, Jenna, are like two of our really significant leaders, Amber leads all of our grant management and operations. And generally it's our sales and marketing team. The two of them are such like fantastic leaders and people and human beings, which I learned a lot from every day. And they're just incredible. And like everyone who works with clients and everyone on the sales team and everyone on operations and back end things. There's so much better at their jobs than I could ever be. And they go above and beyond so much. We have a success stories thread in Slack, which is what we use for our team. collaboration where people are shouting each other out for like the awesome things that they've done. And it's just constant like all the time just success story success story success story. And so I would think everyone on the team because they're truly champions. Nice.
Dennis Hoffman 25:14
So, Grant, thank you. I've been talking with Grant Hensel, the founder and CEO of Nonprofit Megaphone. Grant, how can people get in touch with you to learn more about your company or about Google Grants?
Grant Hensel 25:26
Absolutely. Our website is nonprofitmegaphone.com You can just Google Nonprofit Megaphone, and we'd love to chat with you. And my email is Grant just grant@nonprofitmegaphone.com, happy to answer any questions or be helpful. It's so sad. I'm not really I have social media profiles, but I don't check them. So email is best, and would love to be helpful. Thank you.
Outro 25:52
Thanks for listening to the Greater Returns Podcast. We'll see you again next time. And be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.