If your charity has never run paid search, Google Ad Grants is usually the cheapest way to start. Google gives eligible nonprofits up to $10,000 USD a month in free Google Search advertising. That’s worth roughly £7,500 to £8,000, depending on the exchange rate on the day. This guide covers who qualifies in the UK, how the application works in 2026, and whether it’s worth the admin. It also covers what keeps the grant running once you have it. That last part is what most other guides skip. This research found two still-live UK agency guides that cite rules Google retired years ago.
What the Google Ad Grant actually is
The Ad Grant is advertising credit, not cash. It only runs on Google Search text ads, not Display, YouTube or Shopping. It caps out at roughly $329 a day, which averages to the $10,000 monthly figure, and unused budget doesn’t roll over. It’s there to put your charity in front of people who are already searching for your mission. That might be “volunteer with refugees UK” or “mental health support near me.”
Is your charity eligible?
Google’s eligibility guidelines list five ways a UK organisation can qualify, by registration type:
- England and Wales: register with the Charity Commission.
- Scotland: register with OSCR, the Scottish Charity Regulator.
- Northern Ireland: register with the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland, which Google’s own page abbreviates as NICC and the regulator’s own site calls CCNI.
- HMRC recognition, either as a charity with HMRC tax exemption, or as an “exempt charity,” a narrower UK legal category that covers a small number of organisations regulated by a body other than the Charity Commission, such as some universities and national museums.
- Churches. Google lists this as its own registration route for the UK, separately from the other four.
Google’s own eligibility requirements exclude only three organisation types, regardless of charitable status. Those are government entities and agencies, hospitals and healthcare organisations, and schools, academic institutions and universities. Two exceptions matter here and are easy to miss. A healthcare organisation’s charitable arm or foundation is still eligible, so an NHS trust charity or hospice charity can qualify even though the hospital itself can’t. The philanthropic or fundraising arm of an educational institution is also eligible. Several older guides add membership groups or faith-based organisations to the exclusion list. That isn’t right. Google’s UK eligibility page lists churches as a registration route in its own right, not as an exception or a grey area.
You’ll also need a working, secure (HTTPS) website, which Google checks when reviewing your Ad Grants activation, separately from the nonprofit verification step below.
Before you apply: what to have ready
Having these to hand before you start makes the application faster:
- Your charity’s registration number with the Charity Commission, OSCR or NICC, your HMRC reference if that’s your route, or your church’s registration details if you’re applying as a church.
- Admin access to your charity’s Google account, or the ability to create one using an email address your team controls long-term, not a single staff member’s personal inbox.
- A live, HTTPS website with at least one page that describes a specific programme, service or way to get involved, not just a general “about us” page.
- Someone named internally (even part-time) who can check the account monthly once it’s live. Google’s compliance rules below are ongoing, not one-time.
How to apply for Google Ad Grants in the UK (and why TechSoup no longer verifies you)
- Create a Google for Nonprofits account, using the same login email you’ll use for the ad account. Don’t start by creating a normal, paid Google Ads account and entering card details. The Ad Grant has to come through the Google for Nonprofits activation flow below, not a standard sign-up.
- Pass nonprofit verification. This is where a lot of online guidance is now out of date. The current verification partner is Goodstack (its earlier name was Percent), not TechSoup. Of the five UK agency guides this research compared, most don’t say who verifies you at all. Only one names Goodstack correctly, and none still point to TechSoup, though older guides elsewhere online still do. Google typically reviews applications within three to five business days. If you haven’t heard back after five, check your spam and junk folders for an email from verifications@mail.goodstack.org before contacting Goodstack directly.
- Activate Google Ad Grants from inside your Google for Nonprofits account, under “Activate products.” Google will ask for some account details and submit your organisation for review.
- Wait for Google’s review and approval of the Ad Grants activation, which is separate from the initial nonprofit verification.
- Build your account before you spend anything. Once Google approves it, the account has to follow Ad Grants’ specific structural policies. These are stricter than a standard Google Ads account, so build them in before switching campaigns live.
Is it worth it?
It depends on whether your charity has something concrete to send traffic to. If you have clear calls to action, such as donations, sign-ups or volunteer applications, the free budget is usually worth the admin involved. If your website doesn’t have anything like that yet, it’s worth fixing that first. Either way, it isn’t free in the sense of zero effort. The budget itself costs nothing, but it only covers Search-only text ads, not Display, YouTube or Shopping. Google also holds Ad Grants accounts to compliance rules a standard paid account doesn’t have to meet (see below). You’ll need someone who can set up conversion tracking and check performance monthly, even if that’s just an hour a month rather than a dedicated hire.
The rules that keep the grant active
Getting approved is the easy part. Google’s current Ad Grants account management policy sets several ongoing requirements. Falling short on any of them can mean a warning or a deactivation.
Performance and bidding rules
- 5% click-through rate, every month. Ad Grants accounts must maintain a 5% CTR at the account level. Miss it for two consecutive months and Google can temporarily deactivate the account.
- Conversion-based Smart Bidding is required, not optional. Any account you create on or after 22 April 2019 must use a conversion-based Smart Bidding strategy, such as Maximize Conversions, across every campaign. Manual bidding, and the flat $2.00 CPC cap that comes with it, isn’t available to a new UK charity applying in 2026. Two of the five agency guides in this research still describe that $2 cap as current policy.
Tracking and keyword rules
- Valid conversion tracking, with at least one conversion a month. Set this up correctly, and the account needs to record at least one conversion every month to stay compliant. One common beginner mistake: homepage visits and time-on-site don’t count as a “Conversion” under Google’s policy. You need to set them to the “Other” category instead, or they can distort what Smart Bidding optimises toward.
- No single-word keywords, with narrow exceptions. Google’s Ad Grants policy compliance guide bans single-word keywords outright, with exceptions for your own brand terms and a short list of approved medical conditions. You have to pause or remove keywords that sit at a Quality Score of 1 or 2.
Account setup rules
- Specific geo-targeting. Campaigns need defined location settings rather than broad or worldwide targeting.
- At least two sitelink ad assets on every account.
- A response to Google’s periodic programme survey. Google sends this survey to all organisations in the scheme, and you need to respond to keep participating.
- Search-only ads that link to a genuinely relevant landing page. This is a Google policy requirement, separate from the account-management rules above. In AdsNxt’s view, generic brand-awareness campaigns tend to underperform on CTR as a result, which puts the account at risk even without breaking any single rule outright.
That’s a longer list than most charities expect going in. It’s exactly why Ad Grants accounts need someone checking in on them monthly, not a one-time setup you forget about. If Google deactivates an account, its stated process is to fix whatever caused the problem, then request reinstatement. It’s worth knowing this before a suspension feels like the end of the grant rather than a fixable setback.
An example account structure (hypothetical, not a real client account)
To make the rules above concrete, take a mid-sized UK charity running volunteer recruitment, a monthly-giving programme and a seasonal appeal. It could split these into three separate campaigns rather than one general “support us” campaign. Each would get its own keywords and its own landing page:
- Volunteer recruitment campaign, keywords built around specific roles and locations (e.g. “befriending volunteer Leeds”), linking to a page for that specific role, not the general “get involved” page.
- Monthly giving campaign, keywords around regular donation intent, linking to a dedicated sign-up page with the donation amount options visible, not the homepage donate button.
- Seasonal appeal campaign, time-limited and paused once the appeal ends, rather than left running at zero relevance for the rest of the year.
This is just an example, not a template to copy exactly. The right structure depends on what the charity runs. Proper conversion tracking on each landing page is the most reliable way to tell whether it’s working.
A simple monthly account-maintenance checklist
None of the five competitor guides in this research give charities a way to self-check compliance between full account reviews. A short monthly check covers most of what causes suspensions:
- Check account-level CTR against the 5% requirement, and pause or rewrite any keyword group dragging it down.
- Confirm at least one tracked conversion happened in the past month, and that homepage visits or time-on-site haven’t been miscounted as a “Conversion” instead of “Other.”
- Scan for keywords sitting at a Quality Score of 1 or 2, and pause or remove them before Google does.
- Check that active campaigns still link to live, relevant landing pages, not pages that have since changed or been removed.
- Note whether Google has sent a programme survey or policy notice that needs a response.
When it’s worth bringing in a specialist
None of the individual rules above are complicated, but there are a lot of them. The two risks that cause most suspensions are a CTR slip and missing conversion tracking. Both tend to build up quietly, with no obvious warning until Google deactivates the account. If your team doesn’t have capacity to run the monthly checklist above, that’s usually the point to bring in help. The same goes if you’re not sure the account follows Google’s current policy. Our Google Ads service for nonprofits covers Ad Grants applications and ongoing compliance support. If you’re still working out where paid search fits alongside your other channels, our guide to digital marketing for charities is a good place to start.
We checked the policy details in this guide directly against Google’s current Ad Grants account management policy, eligibility requirements and Goodstack verification notice on 5 November 2026. Google’s policies change, so if you’re reading this later, confirm the current rules at support.google.com/grants before applying.