Time and time again I come across small to mid-size nonprofit organizations that are interested in the Google Grants program, but don’t have a lot of time to spend learning to use the Adwords tool, or coming up with dozens of long tail keywords. For these organizations, I believe the secret to using Google Grants successfully is to limit the time spent on setup and maintenance.
$10,000 a month in free advertising. That’s what Google offers nonprofits through their Google Grants program. If you hit the limit, you can apply to receive $40,000 a month in free advertising. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? This post explores the question Is Google Grants worth it?
Green Corps is one of the organizations that I’m working with as part of the New Media Mentors program. Each mentorship is tailored to the organization, and for Green Corps we’re taking an interesting approach—using the for-profit sales funnel to systematically work through how they use new media to recruit new organizers.
The great thing about this tool is that it forces you to carefully examine each level and look for ways to make things more efficient, as well as growing the size of each pool. This same approach can be used to work through how you recruit new donors, how you move people up the ladder of engagement—the sky’s the limit!
New media and social media tools can be powerful, but they can also be time consuming and expensive. This is why I’m a huge proponent of developing one comprehensive strategic communications plan or marketing plan for your organization that includes both online and offline tools. Yes Twitter and Facebook are great tools, but if you’ve got a small staff, there might be better ways you could be using your time.
Marketing plans like this one help you figure out exactly what you need to do to market your nonprofit organization effectively. They work well for any organization and are especially straightforward and helpful for organizations offering a service or selling a product.
When it comes to measuring success, most of us mean well but struggle to consistently find time to look at results or have trouble bringing fresh eyes to the reports we review regularly. This is why I am a firm believer in the semiannual report.
