Choose to Improve

In the early years of running my nonprofit, I would often think about what would happen to our digital files if I “got hit” by the proverbial “bus.” Yes, I had things backed up to Dropbox, but I was the only one with access to it. And then there is everything in my email account – literally thousands of conversations about our projects to which only I had access. If I succumbed to the bus injury, my board was going to have a pretty hard time picking up where I left off.

Like many of you, I suppose, I've been asked to serve on the boards of other organizations in the community where my nonprofit works. Most of these are all-volunteer organizations with minimal, if any, professional staff support. I find myself continually asking, "how can I help these volunteers work together more efficiently and thereby make the nonprofit stronger than it was before I became involved?"

I think one solution to the above challenges is Google for Nonprofits. For what small businesses pay $5 monthly, any qualifying nonprofit can have for free.  In this post, I will explain what it provides and why I think several of the components are an absolute MUST for a small nonprofit seeking to grow.

1. What is Google for Nonprofits?

In a nutshell, Google for Nonprofits is a program providing free access to five Google products.  Once Google determines that you meet the minimum requirements for Google for Nonprofits, you can apply to use each of the five products.  The products include:

1. G Suite for Nonprofits: A free office productivity suite that includes business apps like Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Sheets, Slides, Drive and Hangouts Meet.
2. Google Ad Grants: Free advertising on Google Search that you can use to attract donors, raise awareness, and recruit volunteers.
3. YouTube for Nonprofits: Free video hosting to help you tell your story, plus donation cards for video that make it easy for supporters to give to your organization from within a video.
4. Google Earth and Maps: Free software to help people locate your community programs and resources closest to them, plus the ability to develop compelling visualizations to track and share your organization’s impact.
5. Google One Today: Free app for mobile devices that features a different nonprofit project very day and makes it easy for people to give.

2. Why Does Your Organization Need Google for Nonprofits?

The simple answer is that Google for Nonprofits levels the playing field for a small organization. With a minimal amount of work on your part, you get access to a first-rate, cloud-based, office productivity suite and four other tools designed to help you build your organization’s base of support, all for free. All of the organization’s email and files stay in one hosted account to which you can give employees, contractors and even board members access. So, if the bus prevails, others will be able to pick up where you left off.

3. What are the Eligibility Requirements for Google for Nonprofits?

Right off the top, Google excludes the following types of organizations from participating, including:

1. Governmental entities
2. Hospitals and healthcare organizations
3. Schools, academic institutions, an universities (for which there is a separate “Google for Education” Program)

The eligibility guidelines include being registered as a charitable organization in one of the countries (like the U.S.) that Google supports. You must also be registered with TechSoup and have a TechSoup validation token to use during sign-up for Google for Nonprofits. For those who don’t knowTechSoup, this is a very good day for you, indeed. TechSoup offers incredible discounts on software and hardware for nonprofits, e.g., $99 Grant Station. It’s an invaluable resource; so, if you haven’t heard of it, I’ve given you a real bonus today.

4. Google for Nonprofits: A Look under the Hood

A. G Suite for Nonprofits

When your Google for Nonprofits application is approved, you get the chance to request enrollment in G Suite Basic, using your own domain, at no charge. If “G Suite” is unfamiliar to you, perhaps it’s because it is a recent rebranding of another product, known as “Google Apps for Business.” The following office productivity apps are included with G Suite Basic:

1. Admin (A mobile and desktop management tool that allows your organization’s G Suite administrator to add users, manage data on iOS and Android devices and remotely wipe those devices if they are lost or stolen, and configure security and settings, protecting your data and ensuring that users within your organization have access to the applications and files that they need)

2. The Email Suite Trio for Any Team: Gmail, Google Contacts & Calendars

Gmail (Provides secure, private, ad-free email accessible across devices in an account administered by your organization’s G Suite administrator. If you have a website (i.e., a domain like “www.yourorganization.org”), everyone in your organization can have a free gmail address with that domain, e.g., joe@yourorganization.org. If you don’t have a domain, you can search for one. Your administrator can add a custom footer to emails for a consistent & professional look across your organization. In addition, if you have the need for group mailing lists like volunteers@yourorganization.org, you can create as many as you need. If you’re currently using Outlook, it is easy to migrate those emails to gmail. Finally, from your gmail inbox, you can easily do a hangouts meet or chat (explained below) with colleagues when you need more than just email).

Google Calendar (An integrated online calendar app designed for teams that integrates with Gmail, Drive, Sites and Hangouts. You can check coworkers’ availability and share calendars so people see full event details or simply whether you are free. You can even set up calendars for shared rooms or resources like conference call lines).

Google Contacts (By default, G Suite’s Google Contacts will add every team member to the directory, showing their email addresses and domain profiles. There are also various ways of sharing external contacts).

Core Office Computing Apps

Docs (A word-processing tool that can be used online and offline across all major platforms. Includes a variety of templates, permits real-time editing, chatting and commenting by teams, opens Microsoft Word files more reliably than most competitors, and can be expanded with add-ons like Lucidchart, Table of contents, Avery Label Merge, Table Formatter and literally hundreds of other applications).

Sheets (A collaborative, smart, secure spreadsheet application compatible with external systems like Microsoft Office. Includes offline access and the ability to customize with add-ons from third-party developers that add richer formatting).

Slides (Create and edit polished presentations in your browser and work collaboratively on same. Choose from a variety of templates and enhance presentations with videos, images, drawings and smooth transitions. View and present from your phone or tablet and convert your slides to a desired format to share with others. This app is definitely not as flashy as Keynote or PowerPoint, but its versatility makes it a very competitive product).

3. Bonuses:

Cloud Search (Uses the power of Google to search your organization’s content, whether it’s in Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar or another Google App. Search results reflect admin settings so that users only see search results for content to which they have access).

Drive (Allows you to store, access and share every file your nonprofit needs in one secure place. With Drive File Stream for Windows and Mac, you can sync files on your hard drive with Drive. The app stores files online for direct use and puts less organizational data on your hard drive; specific files and folders can be marked for local storage and used offline when an internet connection is unavailable).

Forms (Allows you to easily create professional-looking surveys and questionnaires that are analyzed instantly in the Forms App. This analysis can be further refined in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, as each form response is also collected in Sheets. You can also print out individual responses and embed forms in a website).

Groups (Provides a single email address for communication with a team of people thereby facilitating easy community conversations).

Hangouts Chat (Google’s alternative to Slack, allowing organizations to create group chats and channels for internal discussions. Includes dedicated, virtual rooms in which to house projects over time where you can upload items from Docs, Sheets, or Slides. Integrates with Google Calendar).

Hangouts Meet (A videoconferencing app that allows up to 100 people to connect. Join meetings directly from a Calendar event or email invitation on your computer, iOS or Android device).

Keep (A note-taking app that provides a quick way to save things you find online, make a quick list of tasks, and brainstorm your next project ideas on virtual sticky notes. Zapier has written a great guide on using Google Keep alongside Google Docs for easy online research, which you can find here).

Sites (Create engaging, high-quality sites for your team, project or event that look professional on every screen. Provide easy access to content in G Suite, whether it’s a Drive folder, Doc or shared calendar. Embedded content retains its original permissions. You might use sites as a place to store your organization’s policies and procedures or as place for giving board members access to key files and orienting new board members to your organization).

Among the benefits of using G Suite Basic are the following:

1. Once your application is approved, you can set your suite up in about an hour’s time without the need of an outside expert;
2. The suite is built for collaboration. It’s simple to set up, administrate and to use, with tools that will help your team work together more efficiently;
3. Each user gets 30 GB of secure, cloud-based file storage;
4. Easily onboard new staff members or volunteers, by creating an internal Google Site with all the relevant information;
5. Apps are accessible across devices (computer, phone, or tablet);
6. The ability to organize your nonprofit’s resources in one place: You can easily find and securely share files with employees, volunteers, board members and donors;
7. Can be used offline;
8. Compatible with Microsoft Office;
9. Centralized administration console;
10. 24/7 support by phone, email, and online;
11. The software is open and extensible, which means there are hundreds of additional business apps that work with it that are available in the G Suite Marketplace;
12. Google has set up a G Suite Learning Center, including a special hub for nonprofit users. Navigate to https://gsuite.google.com/learning-center/#!/.  Then click on “Learn by job” an select “nonprofits,” as shown below:

How Does G Suite Compare to Office 365, the cloud-based applications from Microsoft Office? There are many who say that Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint are light years more sophisticated than the comparable products in G Suite, so “don’t talk to me about switching.” To that, I say okay, but have you really thought carefully about how much horsepower you truly need from word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications? I don’t argue that MS Office doesn’t have more horsepower; but have you looked at what you can add to G Suite in the Play Store if you need more horsepower? Want more fonts or the ability to manage rows in Google Docs charts? There are apps for those things in Google Play that are simple as pie to add.

There is also the issue of who is better at collaboration. While, for the most part both Microsoft and Google can be said to offer their office suite products free to nonprofits, there are many who say that sharing documents is a lot easier in Google Drive than it is in the comparable Office 365 space. A side-by-side comparison is not the point of this article; rather, if you like the full range of products Google is putting forward free to qualifying nonprofits, the question becomes does it make sense to move to G Suite. Within my organization, we’ve come down on the side of a resounding “YES, absolutely!”

B. Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits

With Google Ad Grants for nonprofits, your organization gets $10,000 of in-kind advertising every month from Google Ads.  You could use it to recruit more volunteers. You could also use it to attract more donations. In both cases, you’re using the power of Google Ad Grants to drive traffic to your website, which is its chief purpose.

1) Qualifying for Google Ad Grants

To qualify for Google Ad Grants, you must (1) Hold valid charity status in your country; (2) Acknowledge and agree to Google’s required certifications regarding nondiscrimination and donation receipt and use; and (3) Have a live website with substantial content.

2) Managing Google Ad Grants

Google gives you the option of managing your Ad Grants account yourself or letting AdWords Express automatically manage where and when your ads appear. All you have to do is pick your audience, write three lines of text about your nonprofit, set your daily budget, and let AdWords Express do the rest.  As easy as this may sound, you do need to monitor your account for compliance with Ad Grants rules.  An excellent guide for creating and monitoring a nonprofit AdWords campaign is Google Grants for Nonprofits: The Comprehensive Guide, a free resource from Mobile Cause.

3) An Ad Grants Success Story from a Small Nonprofit

Google provides examples of organizations that have used Ad Grants successfully at: https://www.google.com/grants/success-stories/wcar.html.  Among them is the story of a relatively small organization, We Care Animal Rescue, working to rescue animals in California’s Napa Valley.  Its goals for its Ad Grants campaign included (1) increasing pet adoptions, (2) recruiting volunteers, and (3) driving online donations.

Following implementation of its Ad Grants campaign using AdWords Express to manage it, We Care achieved the following outcomes: (1) a 350% increase in online activity; (2) a 125% increase in online applications; and (3) a 3.51% average click-through rate.  (These were measured using Google Analytics, which the group had installed on its very simple website).  The organization’s president, Susan Wren, had this to say about the Ad Grants Program:

Setting up our Adwords Express campaigns was simple and creating our first ads only took a few minutes. Adwords Express could not be easier to use. Within the same day of creating new ads, we see results ….  Since joining the Ad Grants program, we have seen interest in our online services increase by 350% and are averaging about an additional 2,000 unique visitors a month to our website. (Google Ad Grants, Success Stories).

C. YouTube for Nonprofits

The YouTube for Nonprofits program provides nonprofits with access to unique YouTube features to help them connect with supporters, volunteers, and donors.  The underlying idea is that video storytelling can motivate the next generation of supporters to take action. This generation may not be connected to other marketing channels, but the YouTube Social Impact page points out that nearly 1/3 of all people on the Internet actively use YouTube.

The program provides registered users with the following:

1. Easy-to-follow “Creator Academy” lessons on how to create emotional videos that spur viewers to take action;
2. Donation cards, which allow viewers to make donations to your organization right from your video on YouTube;
3. “Link Anywhere” cards that direct your viewers toward your external campaign landing page URLs;
4. Donation processing without the typical fees; and
5. Dedicated email support.

Feel daunted by the prospect of making a YouTube video? Don’t.  With a smart phone and easy-to-use video creation and editing software like Camtasia (see my Resources Page), you CAN make a decent video.  I like this short video by a small, Philadelphia nonprofit, Rebel Ventures, promoting its work with youth in that city.  I’ve done a few myself with my own nonprofit.  Here’s one I put together to thank donors to our 2018 annual appeal. It’s under two minutes in length and uses photos from our 2018 events, free music downloaded from the Internet, and a piece of 19^th century poetry pulled from a book in my library. Camtasia makes it easy to put these together in a video and upload the final product to YouTube for sharing with your donors and followers.

D. Google Earth and Maps for Nonprofits

Google Earth and Maps are tools to share your organization’s impact and can also help people find the programs and services you provide. Google Street View, for example, collects and showcases street-level 360 imagery of your locations. Google Maps’ collaborative tools allow you to make and share custom maps that visualize your important data.  With Google Maps platform credits, you can create a map showing donors how their contributions are making a difference.  These applications are virtually free, but you will most likely need someone with expertise to make use of them.

Among the stories on the Google Earth and Maps page that caught my eye is one that depicts a South-American Indian tribe’s efforts to fight illegal logging in its territory. Not one tribe member knew how to use a computer or smartphone before Google trained them to use mobile phones to record instances of illegal logging, which were uploaded to Google Earth for mapping. With help from Google, the tribe also recorded cultural places of importance, hunting areas, for example, on maps uploaded to Google Earth to emphasize how critical the forest was to the life of its people.

The result is that “all of the information is shedding light on the invasion of [the tribe’s] land … and giving … people the responsibility for their own future.” (Share Your Nonprofit’s Impact). The tribe is now using Google resources to monitor its forest’s carbon stock for trading on the carbon credit marketplace and replanting what was taken away from it illegally. For more, watch this YouTube video. My nonprofit is a land trust and there are tools here that are definitely relevant to our work.  But that may not be the case for you. Make your own judgment about whether these products are right for your organization.

E. Google One Today

Google One Today is an app, available for iOS and Android, that allows nonprofits to build fundraising campaigns that are directly tied to impact.  Every day, Google One Today features a new nonprofit or cause and prompts users to donate $1 or match donations from peers. Prospects can share your campaign with others and there are no transaction fees for donations. There appears to be at least some doubt about the app’s current viability, however, with one recent article describing it as “long forgotten.” (Hall, S. 2018). In another 2018 article about apps every nonprofit needs, however, the Wild Apricot Blog included Google One on its list.

My own advice is to be your own judge.  There is one example in the list of the app’s featured organizations of a relatively small group in South Florida that created a Google One Today campaign called Waste for Wildlife. Through the campaign, 483 people helped raise $2,598 that helped a nonprofit called “SOS” get 25,980 pounds of food at the end of its useful life to feed to migrating birds. Learn more here. Google Play shows the app as having over 100,000 downloads. The average review is 4.5 stars. I will have to say that my experience in downloading and trying to use the app has not been stellar. It worked a few times on my Samsung Note 8, then went into a tailspin where it crashed repeatedly and I deleted it.  This may be one that Google needs to revisit.

5. Google for Nonprofits: Conclusions and Recommendations

As the leaders of small nonprofits, we are called on to take every advantage of a low- or no-cost opportunity that stands to advance our organizations.  I believe Google for Nonprofits is one of those opportunities. You can’t argue with the benefits that G Suite provides to give you administrative control over your email and document data, the ease of sharing and collaborating with internal and external partners, and the unprecedented access to your information across platforms and devices.

There are lots of bonuses to adopting G Suite. For those who haven’t tried “Hangouts Meet,” my own experience is that it rivals Skype and GoToMeeting. The latest iteration of Google Forms is amazing in terms of its ability to make the development, distribution, and analysis of a survey almost effortless. And then there is Google Sites, which I have used in my consulting work to create help manuals for software products and onboarding intranet sites for new employees and board members.

The two other Google for Nonprofits components that I think make great sense for small nonprofits seeking to grow are Google Ad Grants and YouTube. For a small nonprofit, a website is the organization's communications and fundraising cornerstone. You need to drive traffic there to get people to sign up for your email newsletter, RSVP for your special event, volunteer to provide service, and make donations. Google Ad Grants can help you do all of those things.

Finally, the future of communications for us all is video, whether we like it or not.  YouTube for nonprofits helps to level the fundraising playing field for those of us who are willing to put a toe in the water of video. Video is really not hard and it can be a whole lot of fun. I’ve got a link to the Camtasia video software product I mentioned above on my Resources Page. Check it out. Spend an hour learning how to make a simple video and then upload it to the YouTube Channel you’ve created with Google for Nonprofits. You’ll be way ahead of the curve in growing your small nonprofit.

---

Resources:

Google Ad Grants, Success Stories (Available at: https://www.google.com/grants/success-stories/wcar.html).

G Suite by Google Cloud (Available at: https://gsuite.google.com).

Hall, S. Google might be planning to revamp its long-forgotten ‘One Today’ att at I/O 2018 (May 4, 2018) (Available at: https://9to5google.com/2018/05/04/google-revamp-one-today-i-o-2018/).

Mobile Cause, Google Grants for Nonprofits: The Comprehensive Guide. (Available at: https://www.mobilecause.com/google-grants-for-nonprofits/)

Share Your Nonprofit’s Impact with Google Earth and Maps (Available at: https://www.google.com/nonprofits/offerings/google-earth-and-maps.html)

Wild Apricot Blog. The Master List of Apps Your Nonprofit Needs. (Dec. 11, 2018) (Available at: https://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/2018/12/11/nonprofit-apps).

YouTube Social Impact (Available at: https://socialimpact.youtube.com/why-youtube/).