Case studies

What these grants actually delivered

Accounts we secured, structured and run — each one opening with its own Google Ads overview. Same four tiles, same trend line, except here you can switch the lines on and off and read any period. Client names are withheld; the numbers are not.

The account at the top is live right now and its figures run to this month. The oldest started in 2023 — we keep accounts for years, not campaigns.

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01Charitable help for children
02Charity and a learning platform for teachers
03Weight-loss and healthy-habit support
04Numerology and self-knowledge education
05Charity commerce for families affected by war

01/Charitable help for children

7 months and running

31,900 visits for a children's charity, and the account is still running

Seven and a half months of a live grant account for an organization helping children: 269,000 impressions, 31,900 visits and $40,000 of advertising the charity never had to pay for — at a click-through rate above 11% the whole way, and still going as of September.

Niche: Charity, children
Status: Running — figures to 14 Sep 2026
Period: 2 Feb 2026 — 14 Sep 2026
Account: Google Ad Grant, $10,000/month ceiling

2 Feb 2026Weekly · tap a tile to hide a line14 Sep 2026

The four totals are the account’s own figures for the period, rounded as Google Ads rounds them. The lines redraw that account’s trend chart: each metric is indexed against its own best week, because money, clicks, impressions and a percentage cannot share one axis — Google Ads draws them the same way. Figures for any individual week are available on request.

Click-through rate
11.9%
31.9K clicks against 269K impressions — more than double the grant's 5% floor.
Cost per click
$1.25
$40K across 31.9K clicks, comfortably inside the $2.00 manual bid cap.
Monthly average
$5,400
$40K over seven and a half months, against a $10,000 ceiling.
Tracked actions per visit
1.17
37.2K recorded actions across 31.9K visits — what they count is spelled out below.

What the 37.2K conversions count, and why that matters

37,200 recorded conversions against 31,900 visits means several tracked actions fire on the same visit — a page reached, a video played, a form opened, a contact link tapped — and Google Ads counts each of them.

We say so plainly because this is the number that steers the account: it shows which keywords bring people who actually do something after they arrive, and the campaigns are optimized toward exactly those. It is an engagement count rather than a count of gifts received, and knowing the difference is what keeps the budget pointed at the traffic worth having.

Reading the account while it is still running

For the first four months cost and clicks rise and fall together, the shape you want. From roughly week 22 the cost line holds high while clicks ease off — each visit is starting to cost a little more.

Caught early, that is a routine tightening of keywords and match types rather than a problem. It shows up in a weekly read of the chart, which is the whole argument for having someone watch a grant account instead of letting it run itself.

Reading the chart

The opening three weeks climb from nothing — a new account coming online, then serving without a break.
Clicks and impressions track each other almost exactly, which is why the click-through rate holds above 11% across the whole period.
The conversion line runs low and flat for months and then puts up one dominant week. A single spike like that comes from one campaign or one action firing, and it is worth knowing which before anybody builds a forecast on it.
The last point is a part-week ending 14 September, so every line drops into it. The account is still running.

If your 501(c)(3) already holds a grant and nobody is reading the chart every week, this is what that costs you. Send us the account and we will tell you in one call what it is leaving on the table.

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02/Charity and a learning platform for teachers

13 months

97,500 teachers reached in a year, at $0.96 a visit

A charitable organization running a learning platform for schoolteachers — courses, materials and certification. Most nonprofit accounts spend their grant asking for donations. This one spends it reaching the people the charity exists to serve, and it reached 97,500 of them in thirteen months at under a dollar a visit.

Niche: Charity, education, LMS
Audience: Schoolteachers and school administrators
Period: Mar 2025 — Mar 2026
Account: Google Ad Grant, $10,000/month ceiling

Mar 2025Monthly · tap a tile to hide a lineMar 2026

The four totals are the account’s own figures for the period, rounded as Google Ads rounds them. The lines redraw that account’s trend chart: each metric is indexed against its own best month, because money, clicks, impressions and a percentage cannot share one axis — Google Ads draws them the same way. Figures for any individual month are available on request.

Click-through rate
16.49%
As the account reports it for the period — more than three times the grant's 5% floor.
Cost per click
$0.96
$93.6K across 97.5K clicks. Under a dollar a visit, on grant money.
Monthly average
$7,200
$93.6K spread across thirteen months, against a $10,000 ceiling.
Clicks per month
7,500
Held for over a year — a plateau, not a launch spike.

Serving an audience instead of asking it for money

Teachers search for lesson material, certification requirements and professional development the way anyone searches for work tools: constantly, and with clear intent. A grant account pointed at that demand puts the organization's own courses in front of exactly the people it was set up to help, at no cost to the charity.

It also sidesteps the hardest problem in nonprofit search advertising. Donation keywords are contested and expensive; “how to teach” keywords are neither.

Holding a 16% click-through rate for thirteen months

A grant account that falls below 5% click-through for two consecutive months is suspended. That single rule is what ends most grant accounts, and it is why CTR sits on this chart as a metric in its own right.

16.49% across a full year is not a lucky month. It comes from keeping the account narrow: ads written for the specific query, landing pages that answer it, and a standing habit of removing search terms that bring traffic but not the right reader.

Reading the chart

The first two months are the ramp — approval, structure, and the account learning which queries are worth serving.
One month in the middle dips on every line at once — spend, impressions and clicks together, which points at serving rather than at demand.
The month after it, the account is back at full volume and stays on a high plateau for the rest of the year. A clean recovery like that is the difference between an account someone watches and an account left to run itself.
Impressions and clicks track each other all year. That is why CTR stays flat and high instead of drifting down as volume grows.

If your mission has an audience that already searches for what you do — teachers, patients, parents, students — a grant can put you in front of them for a year without touching your own budget. We will show you how big that audience is in your market before you commit to anything.

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03/Weight-loss and healthy-habit support

11 months

926 enrolments on grant money, in a category that costs $2.87 a click

A program helping people lose weight and keep the habits afterwards — a category contested by supplement sellers, clinics and apps with real advertising budgets. The grant competed in it and held its own: 206,000 impressions, 21,600 visits and 926 enrolments, every one of them paid for out of grant budget.

Niche: Health, weight management
Format: Programme intake in scheduled cohorts
Period: 3 Jun 2024 — 28 Apr 2025
Account: Google Ad Grant, $10,000/month ceiling

3 Jun 2024Weekly · tap a tile to hide a line28 Apr 2025

Click-through rate
10.5%
21.6K clicks against 206K impressions — double the grant's 5% floor.
Cost per click
$2.87
Above the $2.00 manual cap, which is why an account in this category runs on automated bidding.
Conversion rate
4.3%
926 recorded conversions from 21.6K clicks.
Cost per conversion
$66.95
Steep for a click, ordinary for an enrolment — and paid with grant budget.

Winning clicks in a category that is not cheap

The average click here cost $2.87 — above the $2.00 ceiling that applies to manual bidding on a grant. That is not a rule broken: Google exempts automated bid strategies from the cap precisely so grant accounts can compete in expensive categories, and moving the account onto them is what kept it visible.

An account in this niche run on manual bidding simply stops appearing, and its owner is told the grant does not work here. It does — it just has to be bid differently. 21,600 visits at a 10.5% click-through rate is what that looks like.

Traffic runs continuously; enrolment arrives in bursts

The conversion line here moves on its own schedule rather than with the traffic: clicks and cost run in slow waves while conversions sit flat for weeks and then spike hard.

That is the program working as designed. It takes cohorts, not walk-ins, so the account builds the audience continuously and collects it when a cohort opens. Four spikes, 926 enrolments, $66.95 each — steep for a click, ordinary for an enrolment, and paid with money the program did not have to find.

Reading the chart

Four conversion spikes stand out against an otherwise flat line. Each one is a cohort opening — the account collecting an audience it spent weeks building.
Cost and clicks hold a broad plateau through the autumn and peak together in early spring, the strongest stretch of the period.
The gap between impressions and clicks stays narrow throughout — the account is not buying reach it cannot turn into visits.
The last point is a part-week ending 28 April, so every line drops into it.

If anyone has told you a grant cannot work in your category because clicks are too expensive, that advice was wrong. Send us the category and we will tell you exactly how it has to be bid.

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04/Numerology and self-knowledge education

10 months

62,900 visits in ten months, at $1.29 a click

An educational organization teaching numerology, birth-chart reading and compatibility. We matched it to a market where the grant's own rules work in its favor, and the account then ran at full volume for ten straight months — 324,000 impressions, 62,900 visits and 4,600 recorded conversions, none of it paid out of the organization's own budget.

Niche: Education, self-knowledge
Competition: Low — few advertisers bid this category
Period: 4 Mar 2024 — 20 Jan 2025
Account: Google Ad Grant, $10,000/month ceiling

4 Mar 2024Weekly · tap a tile to hide a line20 Jan 2025

Click-through rate
19.4%
62.9K clicks against 324K impressions. The grant's own floor is 5%.
Cost per click
$1.29
$81.4K across 62.9K clicks — inside the $2.00 cap that applies to manual bidding on a grant.
Conversion rate
7.3%
4.6K recorded conversions against 62.9K clicks.
Cost per conversion
$17.70
Paid out of grant budget, not the organization's own money.

Choosing the market where the grant's rules become an advantage

A Google Ad Grant carries three rules that decide whether it is worth anything: a $10,000 monthly ceiling, a 5% click-through floor the account has to hold, and — on manual bidding — a $2.00 cap on the price of a single click. The skill is in knowing where those rules turn from a constraint into an edge, and aiming the account there first.

Everyday self-knowledge searches are one of those places: people look up date-of-birth calculators, compatibility readings and chart interpretations constantly, and the big-budget advertisers who push click prices past $2.00 elsewhere are not bidding here. Clicks came in at $1.29, the account served at full volume from week six onward, and the click-through rate settled at nearly four times the floor instead of scraping it.

What ten months of steady operation produced

Campaigns split by search intent, landing pages matched to each cluster, conversion tracking on the actions the organization actually cares about, and weekly work on the search-terms report — adding what converts, cutting what only looks relevant.

$81.4K of advertising over the period, around $7,700 a month the organization never had to raise, for 4,600 recorded conversions at $17.70 each. The ceiling caps what eligible search demand can absorb rather than handing out an allowance to spend, and this account took as much of it as the market had to give, month after month.

Reading the chart

The first five weeks are the account being built and approved. From week six it serves, and it keeps serving for the rest of the period.
From week nine the cost line runs flat along its own top for roughly six months. A flat top means the budget, not demand, is the limit — the market had more to give than the grant could buy.
The conversion line is the jagged one: it swings week to week while clicks hold steady, which is what a category driven by personal dates and seasons looks like when the traffic underneath it is stable.
The final point on every line is a part-week — the period ends mid-week on 20 January. It is not a collapse.

The market you point a grant at decides most of the result. Tell us what your organization does and where its people search, and we will tell you which part of that demand a grant can take over.

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05/Charity commerce for families affected by war

13 months

29,700 visits from four premium markets, at no cost to the charity

A charitable program that sells high-ticket products to fund direct help for families with children affected by war. Its buyers are in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe — the four most expensive places on earth to buy advertising. The grant bought a year of presence there: 347,000 impressions and 29,700 visits, for $93,800 the organization never had to raise.

Niche: Charity commerce, war-affected families
Markets: USA, Canada, Australia, Europe
Period: Sep 2023 — Sep 2024
Account: Google Ad Grant, $10,000/month ceiling

Sep 2023Monthly · tap a tile to hide a lineSep 2024

The four totals are the account’s own figures for the period, rounded as Google Ads rounds them. The lines redraw that account’s trend chart: each metric is indexed against its own best month, because money, clicks, impressions and a percentage cannot share one axis — Google Ads draws them the same way. Figures for any individual month are available on request.

Click-through rate
8.56%
29.7K clicks against 347K impressions — well clear of the grant's 5% floor, in markets where that is hard to hold.
Cost per click
$3.16
The going rate in these four markets, and well above the $2.00 manual cap — which is why the account bids automatically.
Advertising delivered
$93,800
A year of paid presence in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe, funded entirely by the grant.
Monthly average
$7,200
$93.8K across thirteen months, against a $10,000 ceiling.

Buying attention in the four most expensive markets there are

A click in the United States, Canada, Australia or Western Europe cost this account $3.16 on average. That is far above the $2.00 ceiling a grant imposes on manual bidding, so the account runs on automated strategies, which Google exempts from that cap. Without that move, a grant aimed at these markets simply never appears.

With it, the charity held an 8.56% click-through rate for a full year in the hardest advertising markets in the world, and took 29,700 visits out of them. Bought on the open market, that year of traffic is the $93,800 on the cost tile — money this organization did not have to raise from anybody.

A high-ticket product changes what a sale is worth

The products here are expensive, and the conversion tile counts 98.33 purchases — the fraction is Google splitting credit across touchpoints rather than a rounding error. A sale like that is a considered decision taken over several visits, not a $20 impulse gift, so it belongs next to the price of the item rather than next to the price of a click.

That is also why the account is judged on reach and qualified traffic first. The grant covers the whole top of the funnel — the discovery, the comparison, the return visit — and the charity pays for none of it.

Reading the chart

The first month is the account coming online. By month two impressions are at their peak for the entire period.
Clicks and cost move together all year and finish strong — the account held its volume in these markets from start to finish.
The conversion line peaks in month three and eases through the second half while traffic stays high. When traffic holds and conversions soften, the variable worth working on is the offer and the landing page, not the campaigns.
Each metric is drawn against its own best month, so the four lines say nothing about each other's size — 98 sales and 347,000 impressions share a chart, not a scale.

If your donors or your buyers are in the United States, this is the most expensive traffic you will ever pay for — and a grant can carry it. We will tell you what a year of it would look like for your organization.

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Figures come from these accounts for the periods shown, and the organizations behind them are not named here. Results depend on your mission, your market and the search demand behind it — they are not a promise of the same outcome.

Earlier engagements and the full client roster are on the short cases page.

Free audit

Your account could be the one at the top of this page.

Tell us your organization and your website. We will read your market the same way we read these five accounts, and tell you what a grant would realistically move in it — before you commit to anything.

A straight answer on 501(c)(3) eligibility
The keywords your market actually searches
What $10,000 a month can and cannot buy in your category
A reply within one business day

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