As budget constraints are a harsh reality for most
non-profit organisations, programs especially built to help charities compete
with companies are often a live-saver when campaigning.
Last week, I spoke at a conference in Sydney on how to drive
social change through community engagement. While speaking with some attendees
afterwards, I noticed that some online community managers did not know about
some of the great, free tools for non-profits.
Here are my top three
Google Grants is a program that helps non-profit organisations
by providing in-kind advertising on Google. The program was launched in 2003 and
is available in Australia, USA, Canada, the UK and many other countries (http://www.google.com/grants/domains.html).
After submitting a simple application, grantees are awarded
advertising through Google Adwords to a value of almost $10,000 per month
($329/day). Grantees are then able to create ads that may appear in the Google
search results of people searching for specific keywords.
Grantees must follow guidelines and are responsible for their
advertising account, where they can manage ads, keywords and look at
statistics.
I became aware of this program after listening to a
presentation from Clair Diaz Ortiz (@ClaireD), who leads social innovation at
Twitter. Claire was talking about how you can change the world one tweet at the
time and how Twitter can help charities do just that.
Since 2010, after launching their Promoted Tweets advertising
platform, Twitter has been very active with their pro-bono programs that
provide Promoted Tweets and accounts to various charities.
In December 2011, according to Twitter, “more than 50 organizations worldwide have received pro-bono ads amounting to over $300,000 worth of donated advertising on our platform".
Twitter Ads for Good can be particularly useful in times of
crisis, helping raise critical crisis-relief funds.
To apply, charities need to contact Twitter and fill out a
simple questionnaire. Australians can also apply for this program.
The YouTube non-profit program helps charities connect with
their supporters via video. Through the program, non-profits can apply to have
access to a channel at no cost where they can brand it, interact with people
and showcase their videos.
One of my favourite features is the ability to use the call-for-action
overlay at no cost, which means you can lead your supporters to your website
where they can take action or donate.
This program is also available for Australian not-for-profit
organisations.
These are just a few of many programs available to
non-profit organisations and, as we go along, I intend to make you discover
many more tools that will help your efforts online.
Do you have any suggestions of great programs for charities?
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