The Google Grants team would like to tell a more colorful story about the positive impact that grantees are having in the world. With this in mind, we are seeking digital photos from grantees that help tell their powerful story. The photos will be used both internally at Google and externally for marketing purposes.

If you have any photos that you would like to pass on to us, please submit your information in this form and someone from our team will reach out to you directly with next steps. Please note that not all organizations will be selected and not all photos will be used.

We look forward to hearing from you and thank you for all that you do!

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Google Grants Team

We hope you've all enjoyed your holiday season and are ready to get back to AdWords in full force.

Sure, you've made all kinds of New Years resolutions already, but there's still time for one more important one... 2011 is the year to make your AdWords grant fabulous!

We'd like to show you two important resources that will help you make this New Year's resolution the easiest one on your list.

The first resource is our Google Grants Help Center. This one stop-shop of knowledge covers everything from setting up your account, to managing your bids, and even how to optimize your account to increase your rank on Google.com. The articles are organized by topics like Basics, Your Ad Performance, and Your AdWords Account so you can access them quickly. And if you can't find what you're looking for, don't fret! Just search for it at the top of any Google Grants Help Center page (we're really good with that whole search concept).

Our second resource is built by you, made for you. The Google Grants Help Forum was created with all your questions (and answers!) in mind. Can't find what you're looking for in the Help Center? Perhaps others have the same questions too, and have posted them in our forum. This is the place to ask the community of Grantees anything you'd like. Sometimes the Google Grants team provides answers, but most answers come from YOU!

Feel free to post a discussion, and see who answers in "My Discussions." If you answer many discussions, we'll show others that you're a star (!) and display the amount of discussions you've replied to on your profile. Also, if you find a discussion that particularly helps you, but can't read it 'til later, you can mark it and come back another time.

Isn't crowd sourcing the best?

So, get movin' on your easiest resolution this year and make your AdWords account the best it can be!

Happy New Year!




Posted by Andrea Cohan, AdWords Team

In November, the Benelux Google Grants team had the pleasure to welcome more than 30 different non-profit organizations at the first ever Google Grants Day in Amsterdam. The attendees were a mix of existing grantees and non-profit organizations that were new to the Grants program. The day kicked off with a series of workshops and ended on a high note with insights into different aspects of online marketing from our 3 speakers.

The workshops for our existing grantees began with a hands-on optimization session, where grantees got the chance to brainstorm with our AdWords specialists on how to maximize their Google Grant to meet their organization’s mission and goals. This was followed by a session on how to create exposure and awareness through YouTube and a workshop on how non-profit organizations can get the most valuable information out of Google Analytics.


For the organizations new to the Grants program there was a special surprise: we made sure that they would leave the Amsterdam office as the proud owners of new and shiny Google Grants accounts! During their sessions these non-profits got the chance to set up their account, get acquainted with the AdWords interface and learn all about basic optimization. Suffice to say that these new grantees left the Grants Day happily surprised and extremely content.


After these product-focused and practical workshops, the speaker sessions offered the grantees a chance to think about online marketing from a broader point of view. Topics covered by speakers from Google ranged from Search Engine Optimization and Google Webmaster tools to Google Earth Outreach and the work that Google does through Google.org such as Google Crisis Response. Then, Jeroen den Tex, Chief Marketing Officer at Red Cross the Netherlands, enlightened us with insights into how the Red Cross puts the online landscape to good use.

Following the speaker session, the grantees had the opportunity to get to know their fellow grantees while enjoying a bite to eat. We were happy to learn that our grantees found it very useful to be able to share advice and best practices with other grantees, and we hope that this will encourage valuable collaboration between non-profits in the future!

Overall, the attendees were very eager to learn more about Google Grants and Google for Non-Profits products and tools. We would like to thank all the grantees for attending and all the Googlers for helping us to make this day a huge success! We hope to repeat this in 2011!

Posted by Anne-Christine Polet, DCS Benelux

We're excited to announce the launch of Grantspro, an updated version of the Additional Services Program, aimed at better serving grantees involved in this segment of the Google Grants program.

What is Grantspro?
Grantspro offers an additional $30,000 per month (for a total of $40,000 per month) to grantees who meet certain requirements. The updated requirements are detailed on our website.

How is Grantspro different from Additional Services?
Grantspros are not required to submit quarterly analytics reports as they were in the Additional Services program. All analytics data is requested on the Annual Survey, which was sent to all grantees this year on November 1, 2010, and is sent annually in Q4.

New applicants to Grantspro will first participate in a Grantspro test aimed at setting expectations about the demands of managing your account at the increased budget and requirement levels.

Grantspro’s required spend level is higher, but the required period of time for this spend is shorter, to allow for non-profits who experience seasonality and fluctuations in traffic patterns.

What if I’m currently enrolled in Additional Services?
You’re all set. Just continue to submit your Annual Survey results yearly and follow the Active Account Management requirements to remain active as a Grantspro. You don’t need to reapply for the program or resubmit analytics data (you covered it with your Annual Survey this year).

Additional FAQs about Grantspro can be found in our Help Center. If you’d like to continue discussing the launch of Grantspro, we invite you to start up a conversation in our Grantspro discussion forum.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

We offer grantees educational resources such as the Beginner's Guide and the Google Grants Help Center. We recommend referring to these resources whenever you have questions, but also wanted to share some frequently asked questions that we have been receiving from prospective grantees and newbies.

1. Does our organization already have to be established and with a developed reputation in order to be eligible for Google Grants?

No. Do not hesitate to make full use of this program just because your organization is new. Although your organization's success and reputation are of great value, we also support newly established organizations with a passion for charity. However, please be aware that we ask your organization to have a charity status in your country. (In the U.S., for example, 501(c)(3) status is required.) You can refer to our program guidelines for detailed information around eligibility requirements.

2. We do not have in-depth knowledge of Google AdWords. Should we hire an advertising agency to manage our account?

AdWords is developed to be a self-service product, and with our online resources you should be able to get started comfortably. As a participant in the Google Grants program, we require you to be responsive to our email requests and log in to your account monthly (if not more often) to review campaign performance and improve your account, tasks that do not require you to hire an agency.

3. Within our organization we have multiple projects with different goals. Can we have multiple AdWords accounts to manage these projects independently?

At this time, each organization may only have a single AdWords account. However, your organization can have multiple campaigns within your account, with each campaign focused on a distinct goal or project.

4. Can Google sponsor events organized by our organization, or other aspects of our business?

Google Grants is a program specifically designed to support charitable organizations through providing a free Google AdWords account and does not involve funding other aspects of these organizations.

Posted by Koichi Goto, Google AdWords Team

Today the Google Grants team sent out a brief, but mandatory survey for all grantees worldwide. We would like to encourage all grantees to please take the time to submit a complete survey so that we are able to confirm your continued interest in the Google Grants program as well as gather information that will enable us to provide better support to our grantees.

We wanted to answer a few common questions about this annual survey up front, but feel free to discuss further in our discussion forum:

Is this survey really from Google Grants?

Yes. The survey sent out today is from our team and is not a phishing attempt. Please note that the Google Grants team will never ask you for your account password or credit card information. Just look for the email in your inbox that has the subject line, “Mandatory Google Grants Satisfaction Survey”.

How do I know if my response was received?
Once you have successfully submitted your survey, you will reach a thank you page with a confirmation message from our team. If you did not receive this confirmation message after clicking 'Submit', we ask that you resubmit your survey.

Who will receive this email at my organization?
The email will be sent to the contact email address listed in your Grants AdWords account. If that information has changed and you need to have the survey sent to another person in your organization, please first go into your Grants AdWords account, update the contact email address and then contact our team via the webform in order to have the email sent to your new contact email address. The contact email address in your account must match the email address to which you’d like the survey sent, so please update that information before contacting our team.

Thanks for taking the time to help us improve the Google Grants program.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

We are happy to announce that the video recordings from our recent Google Grants workshop in Mountain View, California are now available on our YouTube channel! Check out our channel to view sessions presented by Googlers and by your fellow grantees. You can dive into AdWords basics, optimization strategies, best practices for tracking account performance, and much more. Additional videos highlight other Google for Non-Profits products, including YouTube for Non-Profits, Google Earth Outreach, and other helpful tools for your non-profit.

We hope that all grantees, whether able to attend the workshop in-person or not, can learn from these resources and put this new knowledge to work for your organization’s Google Grant and for any additional Google for Non-Profit products your group uses.

Posted by Kristie Mun, Google Grants Team

Since launching in 2003 in the US, Google Grants has expanded its reach to 27 countries around the world, including Israel in 2008. The program has helped many Israeli non-profits increase their web presence and allowed them to grow donations to support their causes. The three Israeli organizations below explain how they have benefited from the Google Grants program.

The Aviv Organization for Holocaust Survivors was founded in 2007 to protect the rights of Holocaust survivors. It is the only organization in Israel that trains volunteers, professionals and Holocaust survivors in all aspects of realization of survivors’ rights. Their Google AdWords campaign has contributed to a large number of direct inquiries and offers of assistance for the survivors. In fact, the AdWords campaign accounts for one-third of all the traffic to their website since its creation.

Established in 2003, El Halev is a non-profit organization that effects social change by empowering women of all ages and by reducing violence against women, teens, children, seniors and people with disabilities by means of training in martial arts and self-defense. After launching an AdWords campaign El Halev has seen “a substantial increase in the number and quality of inquiries coming from their website thanks to Google Grants”.

The New Family organization specializes in legal counsel for family issues as well as support for civil marriages, wills and inheritance, same sex marriages and more. The organization has seen "an increase of at least 40% in the traffic to the website since the beginning of our Google supported campaign." Rachel, the organization’s founder, pointed out that the impact of Google's donation has been extraordinary and has allowed them to help a much larger audience, including people who did not know that solutions existed to their problems and that are now enjoying the special services the organization provides.

If you are a registered non-profit in Israel and would like to apply for the Google Grants program please visit this page for more information. For more grantee success stories check out our testimonials page.

Posted by Noam Wolf, Google New York

Last week, the Google Grants team hosted over 50 grantee organizations at the Google campus in Mountain View, California for a two-day workshop focused on Google Grants and other Google for Non-Profit products. The event brought together non-profit grantees from across the country, with a few participants from as far away as Spain. Both large and small organizations attended the workshop, and organization focus areas included disaster relief, the environment, poverty, children’s rights, and much more.

The first day of the workshop focused on maximizing your Google Grant to meet your organization’s mission and goals. Several grantees shared their experiences with AdWords, first in a case study and later in a grantee panel. Then AdWords specialists presented their expertise on account strategies and tips to the attendees, who were broken out into beginner and advanced tracks.

The second day centered on additional Google for Non-Profits products and tools, including the YouTube Non-Profit program, Google Earth Outreach, and Google Apps for Non-Profits. Best practices and strategies for landing page optimization and webmaster tools were also shared. As on the first day, grantees were able to hear from their fellow non-profits on use of these tools via two case studies.

Throughout the two-day workshop, our attendees were heavily engaged in learning more about Google Grants and other Google products for non-profits, and we are so glad that we were able to offer this educational session to those who could attend.

For all other grantees and interested non-profits, we are pleased to announce that we will be posting the videos from the workshop, including the case studies, from which all can benefit. We hope to have these sessions live on our YouTube channel within the next several weeks and will post to this blog once those sessions are available. We will also be posting several follow-up articles to this blog, sharing strategies and advice offered at the workshop, both from Googlers and from your fellow grantees.

Thanks again to all who made this workshop a success! We are especially grateful to our case study and panelist grantees who shared their firsthand experiences with the audience.

We are already looking forward to the 2011 workshop. Hope to see you then!

Posted by Kristie Mun, Google Grants Team

If you are a Google Grant recipient providing relief to those affected by the floods in Pakistan, there are a few things you can do to make your Grants AdWords account more effective and get your message to the widest audience possible:

• Prioritize your budget so that the majority is going to your disaster campaigns
• Build a targeted keyword list with words specific to Pakistan’s floods
• Send visitors to the most useful landing page on your website, probably one that accepts donations

If you’ve exhausted these strategies and have questions about managing your AdWords account efficiently to scale with the traffic generated by the disaster, please contact our team so that we can make sure your information reaches those in need and those who can help.

Posted by Jessica Vaughan, Google Grants Team

Is Google AdWords making a difference for your organization? We enjoy sharing grantee success stories and would love to hear from you. Whether your AdWords account has led to an increase in website visits, volunteer sign ups or amount of donations, sharing your experience will inspire the non-profit community as well as our volunteers.

If you would like to share how your grant of free AdWords advertising has had an impact on your organization please fill out this form. You may share your experience with only the Google Grants Team or choose to make the information available to other organizations through a testimonial. To read about how Google Grants has helped non-profits from all over the world with unique challenges check out our grantee testimonials page. You can read testimonials that are relevant to your organization by sorting by goal and/or industry. Many testimonials share best practices, so we encourage all grantees to use these as a resource. Share your organization’s story today!

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Google Grants Team

In case you haven't already heard, we will be holding a Google Grants workshop at our Mountain View, California campus in early September. This two-day event is designed for existing Google Grantee organizations interested in strategies to maximize their AdWords account and free Google products to help reach more donors, improve operations, and raise awareness. You can read more about the workshop in our full blog post on the topic.

If you are interested in attending, please sign-up here for the invitation lottery. The deadline to complete the interest form is Friday, July 9th, so be sure to sign-up soon if you would like to attend the workshop.

Looking forward to September!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team

A month and a half ago we had the pleasure of hosting 80 participants from 53 Irish charitable organizations for a full day Google Grants Workshop in Google’s European Headquarters in Dublin.

The day started with some refreshments and mingling amongst the Grantees before heading to an introductory session. Stephen Flanagan, Senior Product Specialist at Google, gave a presentation on Online Advertising and why it’s important to our Grantees, and this was followed by a thought provoking panel where four of our Grantees shared their experiences, tips and best practices with the group.

Even before deciding to host this event, we knew that we not only wanted to help our Grantees make the most of their AdWords Grants accounts, but also let them know about all the other Google products that they could be using to raise awareness and operate effectively. This is why before and after lunch we had two very informative fast-paced sessions, where we covered how to best use YouTube and Google Apps, and how to improve organic traffic with tips from Webmaster Central. On top of this, we held a session on communication goals using some of our free products and this was split into sharing, engaging, listening and asking. Below you can find the Google products covered in the four different areas:

• Sharing: Blogger, Picasa, Google Earth, Google Places
• Engaging: Google Groups, Google Translate, My Maps
• Listening: Google Alerts, Google Reader
• Asking: Google Moderator, Google Docs Forms & Surveys

Then it was time for the main part of the workshop. The 80 participants were split into four break-out sessions (Beginners and Advanced) where AdWords Specialists covered AdWords fundamentals, optimization tips and information on how to best improve account performance, analytics and other useful tools and reports. From there each organisation was paired up with their own individual AdWords Specialist for an hour long one-to-one session, where participants could go over their own Grants accounts, ask any burning questions and even optimize right there on the spot! Needless to say, this was the highlight of the day for both our Grantees and our over 50 Google volunteers.

It has now been more than a month since the Google Grants Dublin Workshop took place, and we are delighted to say that it was a major success. Not only have we seen an 13% increase in the spend in this month and a half of those organizations that participated, but also 95% of participants said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the workshop, and 90% said that they can apply what they learnt on the day directly to their jobs.

A few comments from our Grantees:
“Thanks I attended the course and it was really useful and I am about to do my very own first ever Google ad as a result - plus we have posted a video on YouTube which has had 210,000 views in one week and is in the top ten of most viewed NGO/charity ads in Ireland Mexico and Spain.”

“It was a very helpful, practical exercise. Also, the users panel was very useful - to hear how Google Adwords has worked for them."

“Overall the day inspired me to continue plugging away with our AdWords (despite limited resources!) and to look at the future possibilities of combining other Google apps into our overall digital marketing strategy. Thanks!”

We were delighted with how this first workshop and hope to be able to do more in the future!

Posted by Geraldine Sherrard, Google Grants Team

Over the past few years, the Google Grants team has been working hard to help you, the grantee, make better use of your AdWords account to achieve your organization's goals. We've beefed up our educational resources, added new content to our Help Center, and much more to empower you. Towards the same end, we held our first grantee workshop last summer on our Mountain View, California campus, where 100+ grantees attended a two-day workshop focused on better use of their Google Grants account and awareness of other non-profit offerings from Google. Last year's event was such a success, that we will be holding a second two-day workshop in Mountain View this summer.

That's right - we are pleased to announce our second Google Grants Workshop, to be held in Mountain View in early September!

During the two-day workshop, grantees will attend AdWords sessions taught by in-house specialists, hear best practices from fellow grantees, and learn about Google for Non-Profits' products that can make an impact on their organization. As with last year's event, we will record workshop sessions and post the videos online from which all can benefit.

While we'd love to open this event to all our 6,000+ grantees, we do have a limited number of invitations and will not be able to accommodate everyone. Therefore, we'll be holding a lottery drawing to ensure that we issue invitations fairly. Also, since this workshop will feature similar content to last year's event, we ask that those who attended the previous workshop do not enter the lottery for the 2010 event.

If you're a current Google Grants recipient, are interested in attending the Google Grants Workshop this summer, and did not attend last year's workshop, please sign-up to enter our invite lottery by July 9th.

To take full advantage of this event, we ask for attendance from your organization's AdWords account manager and up to one additional representative per organization. Also, to help us better understand how we can help your non-profit, we'll ask you for some basic information and a brief statement about why your organization would benefit from attending this event. We'll be following up with all interested grantees after the July 9th deadline with the results of the lottery.

Have a great summer and we'll see you in September!

Posted by Kristie Mun, AnnMarie Hill, and Michelle Rosen, Google Grants Workshop Organizers

When I joined Google six years ago, I was excited to work for a company that genuinely cared about making the world a better place for the people in it. My previous employers, the good ones as well as the bad and the ugly, had focused on the bottom line to a sometimes alarming extent.

In my role on Google’s intranet team, though, I found myself an extra degree removed from that whole business of making the world a better place. My job was to make Google a better place for its employees by providing access to internal information—“Organizing Google’s information and making it universally accessible and useful to Googlers,” as we put it. By the transitive property, then, I was making it easier for other employees to get on with that whole improving-the-world business. But I wasn’t doing an awful lot of world-improving, directly.

Enter Google Grants. I remember the first email that came to employees about Google Grants, as the program was just getting started. That email asked for suggestions of worthy non-profits that might benefit from free advertising, and I was excited—here was a chance to get behind those most involved in helping the world! In fact, I could even nominate the organizations and causes I most believe in!

As the director of my own dance company (in my time outside Google), I know first-hand how hard it can be for arts organizations to get recognition and funding. So right away I nominated a dance company and school in nearby San Francisco that’s known for its services to the dance community and offers a variety of programs to showcase rising choreographers.

It didn’t take long for Google Grants to take off, and now thousands of organizations apply for grants; it’s no longer a matter of word of mouth among employees. Since the program began in 2003, Google has supported non-profits worldwide with more than $600 million in advertising.

I’m glad to have a continuing role in helping these non-profits accomplish their worthy missions. As a Google Grants screener, I review organizations every week to see if they meet the guidelines for grant recipients. And I have learned so much along the way. I had no idea what an amazing variety of services non-profits provide to their communities, and it’s fun and eye-opening to see what turns up each week in my list of applicants.

At Google, I still work on internal projects, but now I know that as well as helping Google in its mission to organize the world’s information, I can help a tiny bit in dozens of other areas—arts! education! public health! environment! youth mentoring!—at the same time.

Posted by Natasha Carlitz, User Experience Designer, Internal Projects

Since Google Grants launched in Belgium over 18 months ago, over twenty local NGOs have signed up to take part in the program. On April 22nd, Earth Day, the Google Brussels volunteers organized the first Google Grants workshop to help Belgian Grantees optimise their accounts.

Thirty participants representing fifteen organizations turned up at the brand new Brussels office on a sunny Thursday morning. A welcome address by Simon Hampton, Director of Public Policy, kick started the day. It was followed by a workshop session on AdWords theory fundamentals where the main mechanisms required to run a Google Grants AdWords account were presented. This was followed by two parallel sessions where specialists from the Dublin and Brussels offices walked NGOs through the main steps to open an AdWords account and optimize its performance to best serve their needs. The wrap-up session offered a short overview of other free Google tools available to NGOs to promote their cause, raise money, and operate more efficiently.

The workshop was well received and the whole experience of bringing the NGOs all together was really rewarding for the Google Grants volunteers. We were especially pleased with the level of involvement and knowledge of Google products showed by some of the participants.

Google Grants workshop Brussels

A few words from some of the participants:

"Google Grants was unknown to us a few months ago. We are looking forward to an increasing exposure of our awards, grants and methodological guidance programmes dedicated to support sustainable development initiatives."
- Foundation for Future Generations

“First of all, a big thank you for this event...this well-structured event targeted to the non-profit scenario was extremely helpful as I not only learned first-hand and quickly what AdWords is about, but also learned from fellow non-profit participants how AdWords can work in our sector.”
- The Migration Policy Group

“Thanks to the Google staff, I would be able to better monitor our Google Grants campaigns.”
- WWF Belgium

“The workshop offered practical and understandable information on the Google Grants project, and other Google products that can come in handy. Without a doubt, our organisation – and by extension the battle against cancer – can benefit from it. We will try to get everything we can out of this nice opportunity!”
- Stichting tegen Kanker/Fondation contre le Cancer

"Google AdWords could be very useful for NGOs in order to reach a wider audience and have more impact. For ECRE in particular, this would mean more opportunities to inform about the plight of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe and the challenges of defending human rights."
- ECRE, European Council on Refugees and Exiles

“I am really convinced that all information we got will be extremely useful and will considerably contribute to the awareness and success of our NGO.”
- ONA, Oeuvre Nationale des Aveugles

Posted by Stéphanie Leppert, Yves Taquet & Oliver Zimmer, Belgian Google Grants Volunteers

I am excited to report that in the past few years, the Google Grants program has seen tremendous growth! While growth of this program is important, we also want to ensure that our current grantees are able to learn, manage, and excel within the AdWords program.

In order to maintain a healthy balance of growth and nonprofit success, we are working on establishing an online Google Grants community through our discussion forum.

Through this community, you are able to provide support to one another based on experiences in the program, help Google identify program pain-points, and ask each other for tips on achieving goals. I also am part of this community, hoping to address common concerns on a broader scale.

The discussion forum is broken out into different categories, representing the main program components. For example, the “Google Grants Basics” category is an outlet to discuss the application process and program eligibility. In the category “Creating and submitting your AdWords account” you can learn about and discuss the account submission and review process.

Once a month, I will be highlighting a hot topic in the discussion forum on the blog. So, I encourage to join the community, browse the discussions, and start conversations with other non-profits about your experiences in the Google Grants Program.

Stay tuned for the first hot topic next month!

Posted by AnnMarie Hill, The Google Grants Team

2010 marks the 7th year of Google Grants and to celebrate our birthday, we'd like to share 7 pieces of Grants-specific AdWords wisdom from the Google Grants volunteers.

1. Maximize your ad: You don't have to repeat your organization's name in your ad text if it's already included in your URL.
   
   
2. Send the right message: When creating your ads ask yourself this question, "If I searched on this keyword, would I expect to receive this kind of offer?" People are expecting to find what they are looking for, so make sure your keywords are relevant to your ad and its call to action.
   
   
3. Negative keywords are your friends! Even after your campaign is up and running, keep an eye on search queries to find new negatives to add to your campaigns. For instance, if your organization offers educational games, you could add "xbox" to your gaming ad groups to improve your campaign's performance.
   
   
4. Change is good: Log in often and tweak, tweak, tweak!
   
   
5. Make your ads stand out: Make your ad text relevant, but emotional. Most of the causes that you're serving are heartfelt. This change will make them stand out from the paid ads on the page.
   
   
6. Make your AdWords account a reflection of your website: This will help you create an account with the best structure by using different ad groups focused on the different sections of your website. Use targeted keywords and URLs that direct users to the most targeted page of your site.
   
   
7. Embrace analytics: Even if you use it only to find out what keywords users are typing into search engines to find your website, it's well worth the effort and will open up a whole new world of opportunities for connecting with your constituency.
   
   

And since we have a soft spot for birthday traditions - here's an extra "one to grow on" - a whole list of tips from the Google Grants volunteers.

Cheers!

Posted by The Google Grants Team

Last Thursday, February 25th, we kicked off a 4-part webinar series with NTEN.org designed for more advanced Google Grants organizations. This series, called 'Maximizing Your Google Grant To Meet Your Organization's Goals,' will focus on more advanced tracking and optimizing strategies for your Google Grant, as well as cover additional useful offerings like Google Analytics and other Google for Non-Profit products. If you are interested in learning more about this series, check out the series description and sign-up here.

In last week's session, Beth, an AdWords specialist and long-time Google Grants volunteer, started off the series discussing the importance of setting goals for your AdWords account. Without taking the time to identify your goals for the account, achieving success (and monitoring your progress towards it) is much more challenging. She also covered how mapping your goals to your account structure is a key part of the process. Many different AdWords tools were discussed, and the most relevant ones for grantees (such as the Ad Preview Tool and the Ads Diagnostic Tool) were highlighted. Beth closed with some hands-on exercises for webinar attendees to put what they learned in the session to practical use. We asked attendees to complete their "homework" before this week's session and look forward to seeing how they did!

If you're interested in the above topics, we recommend reviewing the slides from this first advanced session here. We also strongly encourage you to go through the hands-on exercises on your own - we hope they're helpful and that you'll learn something new! If you are interested in the audio recording from the webinar, you can purchase it here.

The next session in the advanced series will take place Thursday, March 4th at 11am Pacific. This session is titled 'Evaluating Performance and Monitoring Your Google Grants Account' and will focus on strategic ways to monitor your performance, with a heavy emphasis on Google Analytics. We hope you can join us - and don't forget your homework!

Posted by Kristie Mun, The Google Grants Team

In a continued effort to find scalable and efficient ways to support our growing Grantee base, we've begun to rely on our User-to-User Discussion Forum. This forum acts as a way for Grantees and non-profits to discuss the Google Grants program and all of its components, including the application process, the AdWords account creation and account review process, and how to best manage an AdWords account after activation.

This outlet also acts as a resource that help you find the answers to questions you can't find in the Help Center. Examples of questions proposed and answered in the forum include:

"Why am I prompted to enter payment information when building my Grants account?"
"Are non-501(C)(3) organizations eligible for the grants program?"
"How long does the application process take?"

In addition to having your concerns addressed in a timely manner, the Discussion Forum also offers:

• improved search results, including posts from current and new forums
• the ability to designate especially helpful forum members as "Top Contributors"
• a reputation and ranking system
• the ability for users, Top Contributors and Googlers to mark questions as answered
• easier access to Help Center content
• expanded user profiles that highlight your forum activity

If you have a question, suggestion or just want to mix and mingle, we welcome you to "stop by" our forum. Googler "Handy Annie" will check in from time to time to answer questions, listen to feedback and highlight great responses and the people who provided them.

AnnMarie Hill, The Google Grants Team