First, separate “no delivery” from “poor results”
Zero impressions, weak click-through rate and few donations call for different diagnoses. Start with the reporting period and the enabled campaigns in the correct grant account; a filter on a paused campaign can make an otherwise active account appear silent.
If there are useful clicks already, start investigating query relevance and the landing-page journey. Repeatedly changing bidding to solve an unrelated form problem usually makes the evidence harder to interpret.
Check the account and eligibility
Compare the ten-digit Customer ID with the account supplied after Ad Grants activation. An organisation may also have a paid account under the same email. Do not add a card to an unfamiliar account to try to unlock a grant.
- Check activation and outstanding account notices.
- Read campaign, ad and keyword status explanations.
- Check campaign dates, schedules and website availability.
- Record the exact reason for a disapproval before requesting a review.
Related guide: Google Ad Grants bidding strategies: Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions and target CPA
Inspect the goals and bidding
A conversion strategy needs a dependable definition of a useful action. Open the campaign’s selected goals, then test that the relevant action actually records. A linked GA4 property does not by itself establish working conversion actions.
My usual starting point is Maximize Conversions with meaningful tracking and no unnecessarily tight CPA target. That is a working recommendation, not a promise that changing one setting will produce impressions. If goals are broken, fix them first.
If the account has been deactivated for bidding, Google’s current account-management guidance says Maximize Clicks can be used temporarily to gather initial traffic and data while you implement conversion tracking, before switching to conversion-based Smart Bidding. Do not treat that recovery allowance as the normal bidding rule for a post-22 April 2019 Ad Grants account.
Look for restrictions that compound
A narrow service area, highly competitive donation-only keywords, restrictive audience targeting and broad negative lists can combine to leave very little eligible demand. Review them together.
- Keep geography connected to where the nonprofit can genuinely serve or inform people.
- Check whether an audience uses Targeting when Observation was intended.
- Inspect inherited exclusions and negative keywords.
- Check whether useful pages have accidentally been excluded from automated coverage.
Expand demand you can answer well
For example, a homelessness charity focused only on donation keywords could miss useful demand around housing advice, volunteering and a seasonal winter appeal. Each theme needs an honest ad and a page that answers the search. Do not add generic high-volume terms that the nonprofit cannot answer well.
Broad match can discover additional wording. AI Max sits inside Search and can extend matching, text and destinations. Performance Max can explore relevant demand across more of the nonprofit’s website using goals, assets, signals and URL controls. Test an appropriate lever, record the date and inspect the queries and destinations it creates. If every lever changes at once, you will struggle to identify the useful one.
Allow learning, then make a decision
After removing a real blocker, allow review to finish and give the campaign time to gather activity. Use status notices and campaign reports rather than one Ad Preview result to judge whether it is serving.
If delivery remains absent, prepare the Customer ID, campaign IDs, date range, status messages, goals, targeting and changes already tried for the official support route. Rebuilding the same campaign repeatedly rarely adds diagnostic value.
Should you try a very high target CPA?
Only as an advanced, monitored experiment after ordinary constraints have been excluded. A permissive target does not change programme rules or guarantee better traffic. Define the quality threshold and rollback condition before testing. More grant usage alone is not a successful outcome.