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Launch and grow your nonprofit with confidence! The Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startup, Small, and Growing Nonprofits is your weekly resource for nonprofit startup advice, nonprofit growth strategies, and practical tips for nonprofit leadership. Whether you're dreaming of starting a nonprofit organization, navigating the challenges of a new role, or looking to scale your impact, this podcast provides actionable insights. Learn nonprofit best practices based around the 6 critical elements that any nonprofit needs to grow foundationally strong: Leadership, Development, Marketing, Programs and Services, Operations, and Finances. Learn effective fundraising strategies, and essential nonprofit management techniques. Get nonprofit coaching and access free nonprofit resources to build your nonprofit capacity and achieve nonprofit success. Join Matt Stockman, a seasoned nonprofit growth coach, as we explore nonprofit development and provide the guidance you need to make a lasting difference. Tune in for weekly episodes filled with nonprofit tips, inspiring stories, and expert advice to help you grow a nonprofit that thrives. If you are looking for nonprofit training or ways to improve your nonprofit strategy, this podcast is for you.
Matt Stockman (00:00)
If you could put your nonprofit in front of people who are already searching for the exact problem that you solve and do it with up to $10,000 a month in free advertising, would you know how to take advantage of it? Because truth is that opportunity exists. But here's the reality. Most nonprofits either don't know about it, they don't understand it, or they never fully use it. And that means they're leaving visibility, growth,
and impact on the table and you are too. Today we're breaking down one of the most underutilized tools available to nonprofits. Right now it's called the Google Ad Grant. What it is, how it works, who it works best for, and how to actually use it to start reaching new people who are already looking for what you do. If you've ever thought we need more awareness, we need more people finding us, this conversation is gonna give you a really practical starting point.
Welcome to the nonprofit launch plan podcast for startups, small and growing nonprofits. This podcast exists to help you build your nonprofit from the ground up on a strong, sustainable foundation by providing clear frameworks and practical tools and real world application that you can actually put into practice. I'm your host, Matt Stockman. I'm a nonprofit growth coach and here at nonprofit launch plan. We believe that every successful nonprofit has to be operating at peak performance across six key areas.
Those six areas are leadership, fundraising, marketing, programs and services, operations, and finances. So on every episode of the podcast, we focus on one of these core areas to help you create lasting impact without unnecessary complexity. Now, before we dive into today's episode, and I can't wait for you to hear it, I want to give you a quick heads up if you're in the dreaming or early phases of your nonprofit, you're looking for clarity on mission.
and vision, building your board, doing your initial fundraising, figuring out what your MVP is. That's your minimum viable program. This is a personal invitation to you to join me for my upcoming virtual Launchpad Workshop, Essentials for Moving from Nonprofit Idea to Impact. It's three hours over three days, where we do things like workshop your mission statement and your vision statement, define who your board members should be, drill down into your fundraising,
and help you build out your beginning programs and a lot more. We'll talk about stuff that we're not necessarily able to dive deep on in the podcast and a lot more. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, or just kind of stuck in your dream for a nonprofit, sign up for the workshop. It's April 28 through the 30th. It's one hour each day. I want to encourage you to try your best to be there alive. That does make a huge difference to experience it with other people who are in exactly the same place in the journey as you but you do have access
to all the recordings as well. Sign up today, the cost is $49 for the whole thing, but space is limited. Go to nonprofitlaunchplan.com and click on workshop to sign up again, nonprofitlaunchplan.com, click on workshop. Now,
Today's conversation is all about one of the most overlooked growth tools available to nonprofits right now. It's the Google Ad Grant. If you've never heard about it or you've maybe heard the phrase but never really understood how it works, this interview is gonna help you get clear, practical understanding of what it is and how your nonprofit can start using it. We talked through how nonprofits like yours can access up to $10,000 a month in free Google search advertising.
why most organizations don't really take advantage of it, and how to think strategically about using it to reach people who are already searching for answers related to your mission. We also get into what actually works, what doesn't, and how to avoid some of the common mistakes that can limit your results. My guest today to talk it all out is Matt Munt. Matt brings over 26 years of experience as a digital marketing strategist.
And what I love most about Matt is that he stayed on the front edge of how digital tools can be used to help ministries and nonprofits grow their reach and impact.
He's worked hands-on with Google ad grants across a wide range of different organizations and is able to bring both strategic insight and practical experience to this conversation. He's gonna break it all down for you. Let's dive in. Here's my conversation with digital marketing strategist, Matt Munt.
Matt Stockman (04:29)
Let's start at the beginning. Like for a listener to the podcast who maybe has heard that phrase, but doesn't really even understand what a Google ad grant is and how it works. Can you just kind of give us the 30,000 foot view, explain the whole thing for us.
Matt (04:38)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. So Google, one of the biggest companies in the world decided they want to help nonprofits and they have a thing called Google ads. Google, anytime you go to Google and you search, how do I make this recipe? How do I do this? You ask the questions that people ask the internet. ⁓ Google serves up results and usually on the top, there's a couple ad results. And so for Google nonprofits or for nonprofits, ⁓
They created the Google ad grant. so basically if you're 501 C3, you can sign up for it. It's free. Um, and once you get approved, you have access to a normal Google ad ad account, but it's just paid for by Google. so Google gives nonprofits up to $10,000. Now, when I say that a lot of people perk up and go, wow, I'm going to get $10,000 worth of free ads from Google. No, the majority are probably, you know, in the thousand dollar range or less. Um, but it's.
free Google search traffic. And we know how important it is to get in front of people. And one of the best ways is through people searching.
Matt Stockman (05:46)
How is that calculated?
Matt (05:47)
I don't want to get too nerdy here, but Google, the Google, ⁓ ad system is basically a supply and demand. So let's, let's just use like a for-profit example. Like if we were running a burger shop and you had a burger shop and I had a burger shop and we both were bidding in the same city, we would be outbidding each other. So I'd say, well, you know what? I'm willing to pay 50 cents per click who will come to my website and come to my burger store.
Matt Stockman (05:49)
All right.
Matt (06:13)
And then you decide, you know what, it's more valuable. I'm going to spend a dollar. So it really is just a supply and demand. How many times people are searching. Google's got a very complex system involved there. So cost per click is kind of what they measure it by. I've seen cost per click as low as five cents, three cents, and it can get up as high as $10 per click, just depending on, again, the volume and how many other people are trying to reach that audience that are searching those questions.
Matt Stockman (06:41)
So tell me what types of nonprofits you feel like is there one that benefits more from a Google ad grant than some other organizations, certain kinds of missions that you feel like works really well with this.
Matt (06:53)
Yeah, I mean, so my experience is any, any nonprofit that has a lot of content on their website, because what that means is there's more Google keywords, keywords and search phrases you can put in there. So for example, I've done a lot with the Christian radio in the Christian radio space and they have an advantage because most of these radio station websites have blogs and devotionals from their DJs and from the artists and they've got YouTube videos that they can feature on their blog. And so I'm able to set up way more ads.
for them for all these different topics that people are searching. ⁓ The name of the game really is you want to find what people are searching that is relates to what your ministry, your nonprofit does. And so you can't just like put up any old keyword like, you know what? lot of people are searching Taylor Swift. So let's just put that in and then bait and switch them. It's gotta be, it's gotta be related to the work that you're doing. And
because Google knows all. So they're gonna know when someone, maybe they click on your ad, but then they come to your website and they don't like the answer they got. And then it's called a bounce rate. So if they come to the website and they leave really quick, ⁓ Google's keeping tally of all that. And they're gonna show your ad less and less if you're not providing the answer that someone was searching.
Matt Stockman (08:06)
⁓ do you, is there an approval process? between the time that a person says, yes, I want to try this to the point that they can actually start running ads. Like how long is that?
Matt (08:18)
So it used to take sometimes up to a month, but recently I've set up a couple accounts for people and it's been less than a week. they, Google, Google changed who they use. They use like a third party service to kind of validate and verify that you are indeed a nonprofit. so that's just getting the account is the first step. Then when you start ads, that's when the real work begins and it's trying to figure out, okay, ⁓ what are people searching? You know, so I always recommend the very first ad that you set up.
is I call it a brand campaign and it's what's the name of your nonprofit? Make sure all the keywords related to the work you do, the name of your brand. ⁓ Some of it is, you know, we don't like to think in this terms, but like competitors. like competitors within the same field of work that you're doing may use your name in it. So you just want to make sure that if someone's searching the name of your nonprofit, that you show up first. ⁓ And then again, you want to find some tangential keyword search phrases that relate to what you do.
And then you can get creative and start thinking of, now what other kind of content do we have on our website? Do we have a blog that talks about, you know, the importance of clean water, you know, and stuff like that.
Matt Stockman (09:27)
I know some people are going to be listening to this going, sounds great, but ⁓ Google confuses me, especially when you get into ad manager, you just get behind the scenes a little bit in there and, Hey, I can type stuff in the search bar, but that's about where it ends. ⁓ you know, help somebody sort of talk them off the ledge a little bit about how, what is complicated and what's not complicated.
Matt (09:28)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It, so it can be very easy. They will guide you through and you can set it up very easy. It can also get very complicated because you can optimize and keep on optimizing. So you can do a very base level. So here's a great example. A couple of years ago, I set up a Google ad grant account for, ⁓ a client, actually someone else paid me to set it up for the nonprofit. And so
Matt Stockman (10:12)
Okay.
Matt (10:13)
I just did a very, just like what I told you, I just set up one campaign. I think I set up a couple other campaigns and didn't touch them for the last two years. So I just looked in on their ad account a couple of ago and it was spending about $400 a month on something that I had just set up two years ago. So I reached out to them. like, hey, if you guys pay me a little, I'll optimize this and make it even better. Cause again, they had no time to do it. So it is complicated.
⁓ there's many elements that are complicated. The great thing is we also live in a day and age where you can just go to YouTube and say, how do I do this? In fact, ⁓ Google ads just recently added this new thing. I don't know what it's called, but they, they weave in their AI and you can, you can chat within Google ads and ask it questions and it'll guide you through it. So that's, that's starting to make it a little more easy. but yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try and make someone think, I can go in there right away and
it's gonna make total sense. You're gonna have to put a little bit of work in, but it's also worth it because this is the biggest search engine in the world. ⁓ And even some base level, just getting some campaigns going, ⁓ you'll start to see some fruit from that.
Matt Stockman (11:10)
Yeah.
Can you talk about some of the things that are good to promote in a Google ad campaign and some other things that maybe aren't so good to promote?
Matt (11:33)
Great, yeah. So, I mean, we already talked about you got to make sure it's relevant to what you're doing. So you're not going to be able to like trick someone to come to your thing. But then when it comes to actual things that you would want to promote within your nonprofit, ⁓ just promoting giving isn't going to work. If you say give to, know, that's one, people don't give to something they don't know yet. And so you need to use this as kind of in the marketing terms, top of funnel awareness. You want people to learn about what you're doing, get them in.
And then it's your job once they've come and they've explored your website to then take that relationship to the next level before you even ask for money. Um, so yeah, it's not, I've yet to see it work to drive giving. Now, if you're an established larger nonprofit, it can work because you're going to, there's going to be people who are going to search, um, how do I give to fill in the blank nonprofit? Now, if those large organizations, there are search traffic there and that's, that's a great place to do it. Um, another thing that doesn't work is.
the more timely, immediate. like, let's say you've got a walkathon or an event coming up. These Google ad things, they really work better with its evergreen content. Something that people are gonna, whether they search it today or two years from now, the content's gonna stay relevant. Like thinking about what are the questions people have about fill in the blank? Because people go to Google for the most part to learn about something. ⁓ So yeah, the timely events. it also, Google ads take a little while to warm, I call it warm up.
⁓ They call it learning. There's like a learning period. So it's usually like seven days. You'll start an ad campaign and it may not do anything for seven days, but Google is learning about your organization, learning about your website. ⁓ So yeah, the timely stuff definitely does not work very well.
Matt Stockman (13:16)
Are you able to go in and see some sort of a dashboard that kind of gives you reports throughout the course of the campaign on what it's doing?
Matt (13:21)
you
yeah, it's Google, the massive amounts of data. So you will know ⁓ exactly how many times someone clicked on it, exactly how many times people saw it. Like if you're a data nerd, you're going to be in heaven because this is Google. I would also say that I wish I knew the name, but when you log into Google ads, there's like a little star icon, like the Google Gemini AI. You click on it and let's say you don't want to dig through all that data. You could just say, which one of my campaigns is doing the best or
which keyword is doing the best. So on an account, you may have 10 different ad campaigns. And so each one of those would be a different topic or different page on your website. ⁓ But within each one of those, you can have hundreds, if not thousands of keywords. And there's generally gonna be a few keywords that kind of bubble up to the top. And it's just good to learn that. You wanna know, okay, you put the time in, you built these ads, what are people actually ⁓ searching and finding an answer to?
on your, through your ad account. Yeah.
Matt Stockman (14:25)
that's really good. Obviously you've done some work for other nonprofit organizations on Google ad grants and placing digital advertising in general. Can you think of a situation where things were really successful from a Google ad
Matt (14:34)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean
the first one that comes to mind was a kind of a large size radio network called Hope Media Group. And I started with them three or four years ago. ⁓ And they, again, they had a lot of content on their website. So it was, I was able to just go through and set up ads for all these different blog posts that they had. And we got it up to, we max it out. So it was the first and really the only account that I've worked on where I've been able to max it out at 10,000 a month to the point where even we were getting a little over 10,000.
I don't know how, but it was great, you know, and we were getting to the point where we were like, okay, now we need to look at of all these thousands of clicks that are coming in, which are the more valuable clicks, you know? And so then we really got into like the weeds of, okay, I don't just want someone just to click and read my this blog post, I want them to click and then go and listen to the radio stream or go check out more. And so we started getting a little more sophisticated on that because
not all clicks are equal, you know, and so we started looking at more of that, that robust data that you can look at. But yeah, it was fun. It was fun to say that I took, you know, $120,000 of Google's money to help a nonprofit that year.
Matt Stockman (15:52)
Which was ⁓ maybe ⁓ dropping the bucket for them, maybe.
Matt (15:55)
Well, and let's be honest here, like Google
is not like they're, they're great. They're awesome, but they're also doing this for the tax write-off. And this is nobody knows, you know, behind the scenes in the black box of Google, but some have argued this is also like ads that aren't being sold anyway. So it's not like they're losing money necessarily, but they are doing, I want to believe they also have good hearts and they want to do good for the world. so they're doing that too.
Matt Stockman (16:01)
Yeah, of course.
I hear you. do you feel like common mistakes that somebody who's new at this would ultimately end up making and not maximize the opportunity to take advantage of Google's money?
Matt (16:34)
Yeah, I think the first thing is you got to put yourself in the shoes or the keyboard of the constituent. You know, what are they looking for? And I'll give this example because again, most people are not opening up Google on any given day going, how can I learn about a great nonprofit to give to? Right? That's just not on people's minds. ⁓ You got to find what is the content that would relate to what your mission does, but that would also serve them in their immediate need.
Matt Stockman (16:41)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Matt (17:03)
So I'll go back to the Hope Media Group, this radio station, and they had a blog post, and this was truly dumb luck. We stumbled upon this. ⁓ They had a blog post and it basically was about, my pet go to heaven or will my dog go to heaven? And let me tell you, like that turned into thousands of dollars every single month of people who were searching, is my pet gonna be heaven? So I started adding, is my cat gonna be in heaven? All these things. Well, if you think about it now,
Matt Stockman (17:27)
Yeah.
Matt (17:29)
They are not a pet cemetery or taxidermy or anything like that. But people were in a mindset of thinking of spiritual things. They were hurting and grieving after losing a pet. And when they came to the website, hey, they could listen to some music that comfort them, you know? And they were also thinking of something spiritual. again, that was like a home run hit, but you gotta think of what other things are people searching where that would be just an easy jump over into what you're doing.
Matt Stockman (17:57)
Yeah.
Matt (17:57)
A
website I'll share a great tool. It's called answerthepublic.com and it basically scrape, you can put in any topic and it'll tell you what are the questions. What are the who, what, when, where, why questions that the internet, you know, Google and all these search engines, what are the top questions that people are asking? And then you can build content around that.
Matt Stockman (18:19)
So even for a smaller nonprofit organization, a lot of times their websites are pretty basic. It's kind of about us and here's what we do and here's how you give a gift and that's kind of it. But what I think I hear you say is if they have the resources and the opportunity to maybe write blog posts, create content that lives on their website that
Matt (18:30)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. ⁓
Yeah.
Matt Stockman (18:45)
a part of what their organization is about and what their mission does and is maybe practical at the same time that that's just gonna help the Google ad grant or Google find other ways they can attach people to your website and send them your direction.
Matt (19:03)
Yeah. And something
that I'll share, because I mean, some people love the written word and like to type out a long form blog post, but honestly, I think one of the best things that I've learned over the past three or four years running these, ⁓ is put rich media on there, put a play button. So whether it's like, let's say you're a guest on a podcast. If can you embed the audio on your blog post? If you have a YouTube channel, take the videos, embed it because we just, live in a day and age now where people, when they come to a page and they see a big old scrolling text,
Matt Stockman (19:08)
Mm-hmm.
Matt (19:32)
A lot of people, like I don't have time for that, but if there's a play button, they're going to hang around. And well, guess what? If they hang around and watch a five minute video, a 10 minute video on your website, Google again, Google's tracking everything. So they're going to go, wow. So this person clicked on an ad from our platform from Google. They went over to this nonprofit website and then they spent five minutes, 10 minutes on the website. That's a signal that Google goes, that was a really valuable website. Let's serve this ad up to more people. So again, going back to my main thing is.
how are you serving the people when they come to your website? And if you're serving them well, you're going to be rewarded for that.
Matt Stockman (20:06)
a great way to put it.
I know one of the things you said earlier in the podcast was it's not a good plan to ask, like send people to your donation page through a Google ad grant because you know, we're going, this is basically a person who doesn't know anything about you and nobody is searching to your point. How am going to give a gift to not the XYZ nonprofit? Right? So it's, if somebody lands on your page, it's more by accident than, than by strategy.
But at the same time, lot of nonprofits are, they hit this barrier where the known universe around them is sort of as far as they can go. And one of the biggest struggles with a lot of nonprofits is getting past sort of the friends and family phase and into the universe of people who are interested in what they do, but don't have any connection via friends or family. so ⁓ what, know, if you were solving that problem for a nonprofit, how, how would you maybe
leverage a Google ad grant, what would you tell them to do in advance? How would you solve that problem for a nonprofit?
Matt (21:12)
Yeah,
would. So before, well, one, I would start the ad grant right away and just put up the basic ads, know, put up the name of your, your organization and what you do to serve people and just start there and see where it works. ⁓ but I'm a, I'm a big proponent of content marketing. And so what I would do is, you know, again, I realize not everybody has infinite time or skills and resources, but being able to create, whether it's a podcast or YouTube channel, creating media.
that is in the sphere of what you're doing. So for example, like if, so I was marketing director at a nonprofit called Cure International a couple of years ago and they had children's hospitals all across Africa. And one of the biggest audiences that would give were parents who had kids with disabilities because they recognized the great value of a hospital for kids in Africa. And so what you could do is create a podcast and content around that where you super serve.
you know, families who, mean, I always kind of joked, like if I could run ads targeting families who were at children's hospitals, like we would, that would be a gold mine because they get it. Like they understand the value of being able to take your kid to a children's hospital. And so creating resources and community and content that help people going through that. And then, so they're going to feel like that reciprocity.
when they read something, hear something, watch something from you that gave them value and helped them get through a hard time. And then they're going to go, and you're doing that for other people. so in every nonprofit, you're helping people in certain situations. And so just finding what's that, what's that anchor that is tight, like tightly correlated to what you're doing.
Matt Stockman (22:51)
Good. That's good. want to just kind of start to land the plane here a little bit. I want to ask you to go talk to the person who they've gone through the approval process, help them understand like, okay, before I go any farther, I need to do these three things. What would that be?
Matt (23:11)
one, read up, make sure you know how to set up your account and what will get you dinged. Dinged meaning Google's gonna go, that's a penalty against your ad account. Like these things can get shut down and they do. So like, for example, let's say you on your website decide to like promote an e-store, an e-commerce store. ⁓ Google doesn't take too kindly to that. Like you gotta be careful or you start promoting.
Matt Stockman (23:28)
Mmm.
Matt (23:33)
We got live events. We're gonna do a bunch of live events and paid ticket events. ⁓ So there's definitely a lot of things or there's, and without getting into the weeds of all the technical stuff, like again, I mentioned how Google's tracking everything. Well, they rate your ads on a scale of one to 10. And if you have ads that are like one to two, like if you get too many of those, they're going to penalize you. And so there's just a lot of like these little rules that you got to play by. So I'd say learn those just so you can keep good hygiene on your account.
⁓ because it is when it gets, ⁓ suspended, know, you can appeal and you go through the process, but it's just not fun. yeah. And then it would just be, I mean, I really go back to like, what, how are you serving them and how can you create content on your website that
serves the viewer, the website visitor, but then also points people back to, this is what we do. And so finding where those two intersect, I think is where the magic happens.
Matt Stockman (24:30)
That's really good. else that comes to mind that you feel like, you know what, somebody who's listening to this needs to know this, or have we asked all the right questions so far?
Matt (24:39)
No, you kind
of covered it. mean, I just, guess I would encourage people. You just sign up for this Google ad grant and you dig in there. It's going to be overwhelming at first, but remember we have so many tools at our disposal to be able to go to AI and ask it questions. How do I do this? Go to YouTube and watch a tutorial. You can reach out to people like myself. Like, you're leaving money on the table advantage of it. And so it is definitely worth putting some time into it because
This is, these ads are driving very, the intent is powerful. When you have, like I can't on Facebook ads target people who are in this certain head space, but I know a lot more about the user when they go to Google and they type in a question, they're looking for something. So there is great power in that and it's gonna bring, you know, for the most part, the right people to your website if you set these ads up in the right way.
Matt Stockman (25:36)
that point, a little bit about the work that you do that got us to this point. I want you to have the opportunity to invite a listener who might be going, you know what? This still seems too complicated. I'd rather pay Matt to do it. How does that work?
Matt (25:52)
Yeah, yeah, I so I do, I do the Google ad grant. Actually the Google ad grants kind of opened the doors for a lot of my clients because they're like, you know what, we just don't want to spend time learning the algorithms, learning all the stuff that's changing. ⁓ and so yeah, the Google ad grant has been something that I've done for, you know, I've got three Google accounts cause you can only have 20 Google ad accounts per Google account. So I've got three of them. So I've done a lot through the years. And so.
Matt Stockman (26:13)
okay.
Matt (26:17)
but yeah, I do a lot in the meta meta space. So Facebook and Instagram. ⁓ and those, I like those ads. Those are, they're both creative, but there you get to deal with photos and videos and graphics to try and woo people. ⁓ one of the things that I, you know, I think is really powerful is when you do the Google ad grant combined with a retargeting ad, meaning we've all gone to Amazon, right? And you search for something and then you open up Instagram or Facebook and you see that product. And so same thing when.
You get this trap when you start getting the Google ad grant humming and it's driving traffic to your website. You can retarget those people with it. Cause again, people are busy. We're getting thousands, tens of thousands of messages every single day. So one click to your website's not enough. Like how am going to get them back to the website to learn more about what my nonprofit does? And so those retargeting ads can be really powerful where you know, they came in from some Google search.
Matt Stockman (27:05)
Yeah.
Matt (27:11)
Now you got to get them back to a different page to learn more about what your nonprofit's doing. So I like, I just, I love the, the digital strategy and being able to come up with a message that resonates with the right person at the right time and get them to your website. And you take them on a journey to take them deeper in relationship with what you're doing because. You know, I love organic creating content. I've shared that multiple times on this podcast, but we don't control that algorithm and who it goes out to. And when it goes out to them.
And so Google ads just adds another tool to your tool belt to take that content, take that message that you find and get it to the right person at the right time. And hopefully then they turn into becoming a donor.
Matt Stockman (27:54)
people find you.
Matt (27:55)
Yeah, just go to my website. It's matmunt.com. So M-A-T-T-M-U-N-D-T.com. Or I want LinkedIn or, you know, all those places.
Can I share one more thing that just came to mind? So we live in a quick changing landscape of Google search and AI. And one thing I want to share is I still believe in the Google ad grant. think it's incredibly powerful, but also I'm taking note of how many people are starting to change their search habits from going to Google and searching to opening up chat, GPT, Google Gemini, Claude. And so
Matt Stockman (28:07)
Yeah.
Matt (28:29)
This kind of goes back to something that underlying current here is what kind of content can you create that provides value? And you know, whether we're going to be able to buy ads or is there going to be a nonprofit program for all these, you know, chat GPT and chatting, you know, chatting with AI? I don't know. But what I do know is great content that serves people will get served up. like already in Gemini, YouTube videos are being served up as people are searching questions within Gemini is owned by YouTube, which is owned by Google. And so, ⁓
Google Ad Grant, like a couple years from now, I have no idea. Will I be doing that as much for people? I don't know. So I just, I throw that out there because I want people to be thinking, you know, long-term, how are your prospective donors going to discover you in the future? Because if Google, like Google's too big, they're not gonna, the search is not going away anytime soon, but it is...
Yeah, it is declining on certain searches because we've all gone to Google and instead of seeing the list of links, there's the AI results, AI overview. So like don't write a blog post of like just stats about ⁓ water insecurity or homelessness. It's got to have some heart. It's got to have a little bit more than that because if it's just stats and data, like that's just going to show up as a, and if people are searching stats and data, they're not looking to read and go deeper. They need something a little bit more, a little more meat on the bones and not just the basic.
stats.
Matt Stockman (29:54)
I hope you got some solid takeaways from my interview with Matt Mundt today on the podcast. And what I hope you're walking away with right now is this, you don't have to master everything overnight. It can be complicated, but you do need to start because when you can position your nonprofit in front of people who are actively searching for answers and connect that search to meaningful, helpful content on your website, that's where awareness turns into engagement.
That then turns into a relationship and then it eventually becomes long-term support for your nonprofit. So here's a simple next step. If you haven't explored the Google ad grant yet, just start there. If you've been approved but haven't done much with it, go set up that first campaign. And if you're realizing I don't have the time or the expertise to do this well, don't let that stop you from moving forward. Get something started. Put a basic campaign up to start.
And if you'd like to explore how to get mad on your team, his website is matmundt.com. Again, matmundt.com. Links are in the show notes as well. This is too valuable of a tool to leave sitting on the sidelines. So I hope today's episode brings some help for you. Remember, again, if you're in the dreaming or early phases of your nonprofit and you're looking for clarity on mission and vision, how to build your board the right way,
who to invite on your board who's maybe not just friends and family, doing your initial fundraising, figuring out your minimum viable nonprofit program. This is a personal invitation for me for you to join me for the upcoming virtual Launchpad Workshop Essentials for Moving from Nonprofit Idea to Impact. It's three hours over three days. We're going to workshop your mission statement, your vision statement. We'll talk about who your board members need to be, define who those people should be. We'll drill down into fundraising.
And a lot more we'll talk about stuff that we're not really able to necessarily get into in the podcast. It'll be one on one and interactive and a lot more. So I just say this if you're you want to you want to do this, you know you want to do this, but you feel like you're stuck in a little overwhelmed up for the workshop. It'll bring a whole lot of clarity. I think it's April 28 through the 30th.
One hour each day, try your best to be there live. That does make a big difference to experience it with other people who are thinking about and going through the same challenges that you are. But you will have access to the recordings if you can't make all the sessions live cost is $49 for the whole thing. Space is limited. Go to nonprofit launch plan.com. Click workshop to sign up again nonprofit launch plan.com and click workshop to sign up.
That's it for this episode of the nonprofit launch plan podcast for startups, small and growing nonprofits. If this podcast has been helpful at all, would you consider sharing it with another nonprofit leader who maybe is in the same place as you just getting started and needs some clarity around what their next steps look like? Until next time, keep building wisely and keep making a difference. And thank you so much for watching and listening.