Marketing for Charities and Non-Profits

Making the Ad Grant work

Google Ad Grants gives eligible charities up to $10,000 a month of Search advertising. Many UK charities leave most of it unspent or lose the account through a breach of the programme rules. The main rules we manage:

• Click-through rate: the account must keep at least 5% CTR; Google can pause or cancel accounts that fall below it for two consecutive months.
• Bidding: manual bids are capped at $2, but the cap is lifted for campaigns using Maximise Conversions, which requires meaningful conversion tracking.
• Keywords: no single-word keywords (with a few exceptions), no overly generic terms such as 'charity' or 'help', and keyword Quality Scores of at least 2.
• Structure: at least two ad groups per campaign and sitelinks on each campaign.

In the UK, eligibility requires registration with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, OSCR or the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland (or HMRC recognition for some exempt bodies), plus a Google for Nonprofits account. Government bodies, hospitals and schools are excluded, though their charitable foundations can qualify. See our Google Ad Grants page for the full service.

The charitable soft opt-in

Until 2026, charities could not use PECR's soft opt-in, so every marketing email or text needed consent. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 added a charitable purpose soft opt-in to PECR, which came into force on 5 February 2026. It lets a charity send email or SMS without prior consent where:

1. the sole purpose is furthering the charity's own charitable purposes;
2. the contact details came from the person directly, when they expressed interest in or offered support to the charity;
3. they were given a simple chance to refuse at the point of collection; and
4. every later message offers an easy opt-out.

Law firms advising the sector read the provision as not retrospective, so it applies to details collected from commencement onwards. We review your sign-up, donation and event forms so the opt-out wording is in place, and keep older contacts on a consent basis.

The Fundraising Code and charity ads

The Fundraising Regulator's new Code of Fundraising Practice took effect on 1 November 2025. It applies to fundraising communications of every kind, including digital ads and emails. Its standards require fundraising to be legal, open, honest and respectful, and for donors to be able to identify the charity and understand how their gift will be used. Separately, section 39 of the Charities Act 2011 requires a registered charity with gross income over £10,000 in its last financial year to state that it is a registered charity in legible characters on adverts and documents soliciting money. On a social ad that usually means a line in the copy or on the landing page. The Charity Commission relaunched its trustee guidance on fundraising, CC20, in February 2026; trustees remain responsible for supervising agencies like us.

Charity ads also sit under the CAP Code. Shocking images must be justified by the cause, and claims about how donations are spent need evidence.

Tracking donations and reporting to trustees

Donations often happen on a third-party platform, which breaks tracking. We set up GA4 cross-domain tracking where the platform supports it, or use the platform's own conversion pixel and post-donation redirects, so each campaign can be credited. A Looker Studio dashboard (£145 + VAT one-off) brings Grant, paid, social and email results together in one place for trustee meetings.

We also report what the money did, not just clicks: new supporters, first-time donors, regular gift sign-ups, event registrations and volunteer enquiries. Where you use a CRM such as Beacon, Donorfy or Salesforce Nonprofit, we can match sign-ups back to the campaign that brought them in, so next year's budget goes to the channels that actually recruited long-term supporters.

What you get

• Ad Grant audit and rebuild: conversion tracking, Maximise Conversions bidding, keyword and quality fixes
• Paid Search campaigns for fundraising events and appeals outside the Grant where needed
• Meta and LinkedIn ads for appeals, events and volunteer recruitment
• Supporter email: welcome, appeal, event and regular giving journeys
• Consent and soft opt-in wording reviewed for sign-up forms
• Trustee-friendly monthly report: donations, sign-ups and cost per supporter

How it works and what it costs

Google Ads management from £150 a month, social media management from £125 a month and email marketing from £95 a month, all + VAT. Ad spend is separate and paid to the platform. No long contracts.

1. Free review

   We look at your current ads, social, email and analytics, or your plans if you are starting out, and tell you plainly what we would change.

2. Plan and price

   You get a written plan with targets, budgets and a fixed monthly fee before anything starts.

3. Set up properly

   Tracking and consent first, then campaigns, audiences, content calendars or email flows, all in accounts you own.

4. Run and improve

   We manage it every week: search terms, bids, creative, posts and tests, cutting what does not pay and doing more of what does.

5. Report in plain English

   A monthly report on leads, sales and cost per result, not vanity numbers, with what we will do next.

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