What I learned at the Google grants workshop

On August 4th and 5th I attended a workshop at Google for the Google Grants program. Basically, Google Grants allows nonprofits to advertise on Google with an advertising credit that Google gives them. It is not a traditional "grant" in the sense of being monetary funds, but a limited allowance of free advertising. From beginning, Google's founders wanted to set aside money to help nonprofits worldwide. Therefore, an entire division of Google is designed to help nonprofits be more effective and efficient and help the populations they serve. Google officially started the grants in 2003. Read the official guidelines to learn more.

 

At the workshop I learned about this history and all of the things that Google offers to help nonprofits. Google offers many online applications and services that have been very useful to nonprofits. Not only can you receive $10,000 credit in advertising, but Google offers services that can help you with creating maps for your website, surveys, message boards, training videos, and even site creation and optimization. I learned some of the best practices of other nonprofits and how they used the grant to recruit more volunteers, start more satellite groups, get more funding, and inform their boards. Google's online tools and applications help to communicate with funders, board members, staff members and supporters.

 

I also had the chance to pick the brains of some of the project managers and engineers at Google. I couldn't help but note the decentralized, people-oriented-culture of Google and how happy and productive it seemed to make the employees.

 

One of the workshops I attended broke some of Google's tools into four categories to easily explain to stakeholders. Those categories are: Sharing, Engaging, Listening, and Asking. As these tools were explained in these categories we were asked to list stakeholders that may be interested in using this technology. I'm going to share with you what I learned in that workshop, however, these are by no means the only tools available for free from Google.

 

Sharing: Blogger & Picasa

At the Workforce Investment Board of Solano County our Executive Director prepares a "media report" for the board members at their quarterly meeting. This report is compiled from news articles collected between meetings. Blogger allows a CEO or ED to publish their own commentary to a web page that would then inform board members instantly. No more waiting until the next board meeting to find out what the CEO thinks about the recent layoff at the manufacturing plant. Picasa is an excellent way to share photos of the attendees at your career fair. You can publish slideshows directly to the web allowing people to see just how exciting the career fair was.

 

Engaging: Google Groups & Google Calendar

Google Groups can allow you to post conversations on a bulletin board. One example would be to post your RFP to a group you create and allow competing companies to post questions for all to see. Then you post the answers. This saves time after a bidders conference and allows the Q&A to be easily accessed and easily read. Google Calendar could be used to post your training schedules. For all the workshops you are offering, job trainings etc. Having that schedule on a public web page that is easy to access is very convenient. 

 

Listening: Google Reader & Google Alerts

Reader allows you to read blogs, newspapers, websites, job boards and anything with an RSS feed on one simple webpage. That can be very powerful. How else do you think I keep up to date on technology? With Google Alerts you can type in search terms such as "Workforce Development" and every time that search term comes up in a blog, news article or web page, you will be notified in the manner you choose. Either via an email message or by a post to your Google Reader page.

 

Asking: Google Docs & Google Moderator

Google docs is a surprisingly, simple office-like program. There is a word-like app, an excel-like app, a presentation app, and the ability to read pdf documents and create very simple surveys. The survey feature built into the spreadsheet application is very powerful for sending surveys to your job clients, program participants, and job fair attendees. All the information they fill into your survey is tabulated and stored in a spreadsheet and as simple charts. Google Moderator allows you to post a question and then rate answers to the question thereby finding the best answer. It's a bit similar to Yahoo Answers.

 

One of the most useful technologies I've used is Google Sites which allows you to create a dashboard that displays all of the above mentioned apps. Read this post by Enterprise Dashboard to see how.

 

Also, don't forget to check out Google MyMaps and Google Earth.

 

For updates on the latest info on Google Grants see the Google Grants Blog 

See the Google for Nonprofits YouTubeChannel and watch this video.

 

What uses for Google do you think your stakeholders should know about?

 

Contributor Bryan Lundeen works for the Solano County (California) Workforce Investment Board