Google Ad Grants program provides access to $10,000 USD of in-kind advertising every month for text ads for qualified organizations. The application process is straightforward, unless your organization already has an account and cannot access it. Google has a policy of one account per 501(c)(3) and they strictly enforce it by connecting each legal entity to a TechSoup account (or comparable program for those who are outside of the U.S.), each TechSoup account to a Google for Nonprofits account (“G4NP”), and each G4NP to a Google Grants account. This linking prohibits multiple accounts for a single legal entity. The article below provides some smart workarounds to help your organization to recover your login credentials. Read the full article here: Nonprofit Technology Conference
Try logging into Google Ads with multiple emails
Log in to the email account that you think is most likely to be the admin of your Google Grants account based on your research in G4NP. Visit ads.google.com. If you are prompted to create an account, don’t. This means that the email you tried is not currently connected to an existing Ads account.
Even if you do enter a pre-existing account this way, make sure that it is your Google Grants account. You have your Customer ID listed in G4NP from the previous step. You can check this against the Customer ID in your Ads account to make sure it is the same by clicking the question mark icon in the top right corner.
This step is critical because nonprofits often accidentally create paid accounts when trying to enroll. This is why my most important advice when applying for this is never to enter credit card information. However, this account you access may have had credit card information entered before your involvement, so it’s essential to check that Customer ID to make sure it’s the right account.
If you cannot log into your account the first time, try the other email addresses listed in your G4NP.
Though it’s most likely that one of the emails listed in your G4NP also has access to your Google Grants, it is possible that after initial enrollment, an email has been added to your Google Grants but not to G4NP so that person wouldn’t show up in your G4NP research. So try other emails of people that have worked or currently work at your organization who you think may have had access based on their job responsibilities once you’ve exhausted your G4NP email list.
An email password is a private thing, so you likely want to have those people connected to the emails you uncover do these steps themselves along with your help. However, this is still a problem if the emails listed are former employees you either don’t have a good relationship with or don’t have contact information for. That leads us to access requests.
Submit a request
If you still can’t get into your account trying the above, you can submit an access request to Google.
This is the last resort. Getting access to an account this way is difficult because they require you to provide information about your account to prove that you are the owner. Often, you will have limited information about the account because it was created by someone other than you.