Keywords are the mechanism through which your ads connect with people actively searching for what your nonprofit does. Getting keyword research right — choosing the right terms, organizing them correctly, and managing them with the right match type — is one of the highest-leverage activities in Ad Grants account management. This guide covers the compliance requirements, strategic approach, and ongoing practices that produce well-performing, compliant keyword sets.
Keyword Compliance Requirements
Before getting into strategy, there are two compliance rules that apply to every keyword in every campaign.
No single-word keywords: Every keyword in your account must contain at least two words. This applies across all match types — broad, phrase, and exact. Single-word keywords such as “donate,” “volunteer,” or “hunger” are prohibited regardless of how relevant they seem. Every keyword needs a second word: “donate online,” “volunteer opportunities,” “hunger relief.”
Keyword Quality Score must be 3/10 or higher: This is a hard compliance requirement, not a performance guideline. Google evaluates Quality Score for every active keyword in your account, and keywords that fall below 3/10 can trigger account deactivation. Weekly review and pausing of low-Quality Score keywords is standard practice for any well-maintained Ad Grants account. If a keyword’s Quality Score drops below 3, pause it immediately — do not wait for a monthly review cycle.
These two rules apply to every keyword in every campaign, always. Build them into your regular account maintenance from day one.
Match Type: Default to Broad Match
Ad Grants accounts should default to Broad Match for most keywords. This is the recommended approach for a straightforward reason: broad match maximizes reach, helps Google’s algorithm find relevant searches you haven’t explicitly anticipated, and gives the account the best chance of spending the full $10,000 monthly budget.
Ad Grants accounts already operate within meaningful budget constraints. Layering overly restrictive match types on top of those limits makes budget utilization harder and limits the algorithm’s ability to learn. Broad match with well-configured negative keywords gives you reach without sacrificing relevance.
Phrase match and exact match have their place — for branded terms, high-value program-specific keywords, or situations where broad match is consistently surfacing irrelevant queries — but they should be used deliberately and sparingly rather than as a default.
Keyword Volume and Ad Group Structure
The number of keywords per ad group directly affects your ability to write relevant ad copy, which in turn affects Quality Scores and click-through rates. Keep each ad group to a maximum of 15–20 keywords.
This limit exists for a practical reason: Ad Grants ad copy performs best when your target keywords appear naturally in your headlines and descriptions. If an ad group contains 60 keywords spanning multiple loosely related topics, it becomes impossible to write ad copy that is genuinely relevant to all of them. The result is lower ad relevance scores, lower Quality Scores, and lower CTR — all of which work against account performance and compliance.
With 15–20 tightly themed keywords per ad group, you can include target keywords in 3–4 headlines, write descriptions that speak directly to the searcher’s intent, and maintain the keyword-to-ad-to-landing-page congruence that Google’s quality scoring system rewards.
How to Prioritize Keywords
Not all relevant keywords are equally worth targeting. The best keywords for Ad Grants combine two characteristics: high estimated monthly search volume and low competition from paid advertisers.
On highly competitive keywords, paid advertisers often outbid Ad Grants ads entirely, meaning your ads fail to serve regardless of how well they’re structured. Keywords where paid competition is low are where Ad Grants can reliably win impressions and clicks without being crowded out by larger budgets.
Use Google Keyword Planner to research estimated volume and competition levels. Filter for keywords with meaningful search volume and low-to-medium competition. These are the terms where your Ad Grants budget will go furthest.
Nonprofit Keyword Categories
Donation and fundraising keywords: Terms used by people actively looking to give. Examples: “[cause] donations,” “donate to [cause],” “support [organization type],” “how to help [cause],” “[emergency] relief fund.” These are highest-priority because they represent direct donor intent.
Volunteer recruitment keywords: Terms used by people looking to get involved. Examples: “volunteer opportunities [location],” “[cause] volunteer work,” “how to volunteer for [cause],” “[location] nonprofit volunteers.” These drive program engagement and organizational capacity.
Program and service keywords: Terms used by people who need what you offer. Examples: “[service type] near me,” “free [service] programs,” “[condition] support services,” “[demographic] assistance programs.” Particularly valuable for nonprofits offering direct services.
Awareness and educational keywords: Terms used by people learning about an issue. Examples: “[cause] information,” “learn about [issue],” “[cause] statistics,” “how to prevent [problem].” Lower conversion intent but valuable for top-of-funnel audience building.
Branded keywords: Terms that include your organization’s name or program names. Always include these — branded searches convert at high rates and branded keywords typically carry strong Quality Scores.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords exclude search queries that are technically related to your keywords but irrelevant to your mission. They are essential for maintaining relevance and protecting CTR, particularly when using broad match.
Review your search terms report regularly — at least weekly for active campaigns — and add negative keywords for queries that are consuming impressions without driving meaningful engagement. Common negative keyword categories for nonprofits include job listings (add “jobs,” “salary,” “hiring” as negatives if you’re not recruiting staff through Ad Grants), academic searches (if your mission-related keywords overlap with homework or research queries), and commercial competitors.
For search campaigns, negative keyword management is an ongoing task. For Performance Max campaigns, the automated targeting means less granular negative keyword control, which is one reason search campaigns remain important for precision targeting.
Including Keywords in Ad Copy
The most important factor for ad relevance scoring is whether your target keywords appear in your ad headlines. Google evaluates keyword-to-ad congruence when calculating Quality Scores — ads that visibly match what the user searched for earn higher relevance scores, better positions, and higher CTR.
For each ad group, identify the 3–4 most important keywords and ensure they appear naturally in at least that many headlines, written in Title Case. This is another reason the 15–20 keyword limit per ad group matters: it keeps the keyword set focused enough that including them in headlines is achievable without forcing awkward phrasing.
Keyword Research Tools and Sources
Google Keyword Planner: The primary tool for Ad Grants keyword research. Access it through your Google Ads account. Use your nonprofit’s website URL as a seed to surface relevant keyword suggestions, and filter for keywords with meaningful volume and low competition. Focus on the “Related keywords” view rather than just search volume rankings.
Google Search Autocomplete: Type seed keywords into Google’s search bar and observe the autocomplete suggestions, “People also ask” boxes, and “Related searches” at the bottom of results pages. These surfaces reveal how real people phrase searches related to your cause and often surface keyword variations you wouldn’t have thought to research directly.
Your own website content: Audit your program pages, service descriptions, and impact reports for the language you use to describe your work. Natural, mission-specific language often contains strong keyword candidates that generic keyword tools miss.
Search terms report: Your existing Google Ads search terms report is one of the best sources of new keyword ideas. Queries that are already driving clicks and conversions from broad match campaigns are proven performers — many can be added as explicit keywords with dedicated ad groups and landing pages.
Looking to skip the manual keyword research process? Ad Grants Pilot automates keyword research using SEMrush data — extracting seed terms from your website content, validating search volume, and organizing keywords into ready-to-publish ad groups automatically.