DatelineCarolinaGoogle helps S.C. charities – one click at a time

Google helps S.C. charities – one click at a time

By Gwendolyn Weiler
Edited by Lake Morris

Google has stepped in to help Children's Chance raise the $300,000 it needs to clear its waiting list. But in this digital age, Google isn't cutting a check to the Columbia-based charity, which helps families dealing with cancer pay for nonmedical expenses.

Instead, it's donating $10,000 a month in pay-per-click advertising to help the creators of Zig the Pig solicit donations.

Google gives select charities limited, free access to its AdWords advertising program, those little text ads that pop up on the right side of the screen when you do a search. Businesses normally bid to have ads associated with certain searches and pay each time someone clicks on the ad.

Clicks can cost as much as someone is willing to pay for them, Google spokesman Jim Prosser said. Google won't say how much the highest bids are. Google gives charities like Children's Chance the ability to put ads for free in places where the cost normally would be $1 or less. The ads take users to the organization's website, where the charity can make its pitch for a donation.

Google won't say how much it's donated in AdWords since starting the campaign in 2003, Prosser said, but the company reported that 30 S.C. nonprofit organizations received a total of $326,000 in free advertising last year.

Children's Chance has had its grant only since August, so it's too soon to see results, Executive Director Tom McGee said.

"We're hoping to tweak it and find our way," McGee said. "We're not IT experts, so we're having to depend on other folks."

Google gives some coaching in the beginning and has other resources, like blogs, that can be a place for getting ideas and having questions answered, Prosser said.

But Michael Guy, owner of SEO Expert, a multimillion-dollar search engine optimization company in Portland, Ore., said grant participants should have a professional manage their pay-per-click campaigns to make sure they get the most value.

Someone who thinks that they can just pick it up and learn as they go is already way behind the curve because pay-per-click advertising isn't just another resource – it's part of a revolution that's already happened, Guy said.

Those that have experience in pay-per-click and search engine optimization are most familiar with trends and how to get the best conversion rates, which is the ratio of website views to how many times a viewer takes an action, like making a donation or placing an order, Guy said.

The Dictionary Project of Mount Pleasant, which aims to give a dictionary to every child, has received AdWords grants since 2006 and has an in-house webmaster managing the account.

"Our webmaster places our ads all over the Internet – wherever he feels they will draw attention to our cause," Executive Director Mary French said.

French said the Dictionary Project primarily uses the ads to drive traffic to its website, as opposed to soliciting donations, in hopes more traffic will turn into more donations.

The organization, with a $4 million budget, doesn't have a breakdown of how much it's received through its AdWord campaign, French said.

Online donations are increasing for charities across the country, but most are still coming from more traditional fundraising methods, said Noelle Barton, manager of special projects at the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Direct mail is still the most popular, with online donations making up an average of 1 percent of total donations, she said.

But some charities are far-exceeding the average, Barton said. For example, the American Cancer Society received $114 million in online donations last year, 13 percent of its total.

Wings for Kids, which created after school programs in schools serving Charleston's low-income neighborhoods, has had an AdWords grant since 2009, but most of its funding comes from the federal government, said Adam Pomerantz, the charity's business director.

Each organization can use up to $10,000 per month in pay-per-click advertising as long as it complies with the terms of use. Among the rules are that organizations need to own the ads they use and that they must log in to their account at least once a month.

Wings usually uses about $8,000 of its allotted $10,000 each month to try to drive traffic to its website so it can generate more interest in the organization and get more people downloading and using its free online resources, he said.

"We don't get a ton of hits from solicitation," Pomerantz said. "But our August donations were 10 percent higher than they were last August."

Wings receives some other noncash donations, like snacks from the U.S. Agriculture Department and free rent from the Advent Lutheran Church, but "AdWords is unique in pushing the envelope of where donations come from," Pomerantz said.

Prosser said the grants are "Google's way of giving back to groups doing incredibly good work, but don't have expensive marketing budgets."

"This isn't just for donations," Prosser said. "It's about building awareness."