Episode #221 – How to Use a Google Grant to Recruit Volunteers with Clay Mansell 

Tobi Johnson: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Volunteer Nation podcast. I’m your host, Tobi Johnson, and I am very excited to talk about- okay, I’m gonna geek out a little bit on it, Google Grants. If you are looking for volunteers and you are not leveraging the power of Google search, it’s time. It’s beyond time.

I have an expert, Clay Mansell, with me. He’s gonna talk about what Google Grants are, how to get them, and just help us understand how these grants, that can be up to $10,000 a month, can help you put out free advertising on Google so that you show up at the top of the search results. People are still going on Google. This is where they find their information. Even where Google has AI, that is finding organizations. If you’re not showing up at the top of Google in the regular search, you’re most likely not going to show up in the AI‑based search.

We’ve done a lot of work in our search engine optimization at Volunteer Pro, and we’re lucky enough, after 10 years of working at it, that we show up at the top of Google for “volunteer management training.” So we know what it’s all about. We’ve struggled, tried to figure it out, and learned a lot along the way. But I’m happy to hand the mic over to an expert to talk about this and really give you guys strategy, and then what to say to your comms people when you’ve got to go talk about that grant, because they’re the ones that probably know whether or not you have one and how to get one.

How’s that sound to everybody? If it’s good, raise your hand. You probably can’t see you, but you can see me. Raise your hand. Yes, I’m ready to go. So welcome, Clay, to the pod.

Clay Mansell: Absolutely. I really appreciate you having me out. I’m excited to talk about the Google programs.

Tobi: Awesome. So before we get started, though, I’m going to read Clay’s bio so you get a sense of where he’s from and what he does. He is a serial entrepreneur; I’m not reading his whole bio because he has many companies going. He is out there just making things happen and shaking things up in his community.

Clay is the president of a full‑service advertising agency, Mansell Media, with offices in Clinton, Mississippi, and Memphis, Tennessee, so he’s just down the road from East Tennessee, really. Mansell Media has a team of 14 dedicated marketing professionals. Some of the team have been with Mansell since the founding in 2010, so they are a tight‑knit group helping organizations, both nonprofit and public sector and private sector, I should say, do better with marketing.

He also serves on several boards, including the Clinton Chamber of Commerce, Main Street Clinton (which is interesting, Clay, I’ve done some work with different Main Street groups helping them with their volunteer engagement, so I absolutely know what Main Street’s all about), Mississippi College Alumni Board, and as Board Chair of Merit Health Central.

Despite his many responsibilities, Clay’s greatest pride is his family. He and his wife, Amanda, are parents of three children: Annabel, Bentley, and Grayson. They’ve opened their home to 10 foster children over the past four years. So welcome to the pod, Clay. I think you’re in good company here.

Clay: Awesome, yes, thanks for having me. I love the Main Street connection. It’s one of my top favorite nonprofits. We do a lot of that here in Clinton and in the whole state of Mississippi.

Tobi: Yeah, and if folks aren’t familiar with Main Street, it’s an organization that works with, usually it’s smaller communities, doing beautification, economic development, events. There’s just so much going on to bring people to small communities and to really strengthen community spirit. Is that the way you see Main Street, Clay?

Clay: Absolutely. That’s what it does. In Clinton specifically, it helped revitalize our old town area. We’ve had lots of wins with getting buildings restored. There was a building that was past vacant, wasn’t in the best shape; they’ve gotten it to where it can take a tenant, and our occupancy in downtown Clinton is basically 100% now. So it’s a great nonprofit. I really, really like the work they do.

Tobi: Yeah, it’s really sort of practical, but also community‑based. I love it. I’ve worked with several; I’ve trained and coached several nonprofits that are working with Main Street organizations, particularly in Wisconsin, which is an area I worked in a lot.

Well, let’s get started talking about what we’re really here to talk about, which is Google Ads and Google Grants. But before we get into that, I also want to ask you how you got into the world of serving nonprofits, because on your website, you call it out: “Look, we’re here to serve nonprofits”, that’s one of your customer bases. Tell us how you got into that kind of work.

Clay: I would love to say that there was this sophisticated plan and we chased it, but that’s really not how it worked. Just with the world that I’m in, I’m involved with a lot of nonprofits as I serve on their boards and stuff. So we started really that way, helping the nonprofits I was on. Then our customer base just kind of naturally gravitated. We had a decent amount of nonprofits, and, like you probably realize, they refer people. If they have somebody doing a good job for them, they pass this on to their executive director friend that is a staff of one that needs some help in this world. So that’s really how the nonprofit side of Mansell Media has grown over the years, a lot of word of mouth.

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. You might not be surprised, but maybe you would be surprised that most of our guests kind of, by happy accident, ended up in their roles. So many folks are leaders of volunteers or people in the nonprofit space, and often when you ask people, “How did you get into volunteer engagement?” they’ll say, “Well, I didn’t go to college for it.” We come to this space because we have a heart for it and because people gravitate to us because we’re mission‑based.

Here’s another question I love to ask all our guests that come on the Volunteer Nation: Why do you think volunteerism and public service are important in today’s world?

Clay: Oh goodness. Volunteerism, the right level of it, can make a community. If you see a community that has a great volunteer base, and that’s usually several organizations that are actively recruiting, they’ll improve the quality of life in their town or their community, not only in the event that they’re doing or the mission of that nonprofit, but when you get 20 or 30 people together working together for a cause, they build friendships, they understand, they see what it takes in their community.

As a community, it might just be an organization. I’m the biggest proponent of volunteerism. I talk about it a lot, whether it’s through the Chamber of Commerce; that level of volunteer looks different than a different volunteer in an organization that may not have a staff. It will change your community when you have the right level of volunteerism going in and the opportunities available. I see people that volunteer for things that are not my cup of tea, but other things are. So it’s a great deal for community to be heavily involved that way.

Tobi: Yeah, I could not agree more. There’s a lot of hidden volunteering going on. I think people don’t realize: if you go out and your kids are on sports teams, usually the coaches are volunteers. If you’re part of a faith community, often most of the layperson work is done by volunteers. If you go to a hospital and get care, usually there are volunteers working in that hospital. Most schools have volunteers. So there’s a network of people making that social capital that is really holding communities together.

Let’s talk about your work and how you got involved with Google Grants in particular. You’ve got a full‑service marketing and media company, but why focus on Google Grants, and how’d you get into that? It’s been a long time. I remember back in the day, now this is gonna date me, y’all, I was back in the Bay Area working at a nonprofit, and I was invited by Google; a bunch of people were invited to learn about paid advertising on Google. I remember at the time I was like, “Hmm, I don’t know. I don’t think we need to do this right now.” I went away from that meeting and went on with my work. I remember back to that day thinking, “Wow, what an opportunity that I missed way back when.” And that was like, I don’t know, back in the ’90s, I think.

So how long have you been involved with Google Grants, in Google Ads and working with SEO,and how did you get into it?

Clay: We have probably only been doing it now seven or eight years. The very first account that we started a Google Grant for, they actually asked us about it. I do want to share, because we’re in the nonprofit world, and you hear the word “grant,” you probably cringe, and you’re thinking reporting and a thousand‑page essay, we ought to just call it “Google free money,” like our Google free ads. “Grant” is really not the right word for it. There’s no reporting. I mean, there is on their end, but it’s all that they’re wanting to maintain a certain click‑through rate and things like that, but they see it before you do. And to apply for it is not hard.

When we got this first one, and it was the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, I just started telling everybody about it. I was like, “Google has free ads for you. Go apply for it.” But even then, so many nonprofits I work with have one employee or they have half of an employee, and they’re literally like, “I don’t care how easy it is. I cannot do one more thing.” So then we just started offering it as a service through Mansell Media.

I will share, too, that the amount sounds great; it’s a $10,000‑a‑month grant. But if you’re a smaller nonprofit and you’re focused on the town you’re in, you’re not going to be able to spend $10,000. In fact, that first account we had in the Sports Hall of Fame was one that was able to spend more of their money because they’re talking about an athlete that has more than even just Mississippi name‑brand ID. Their account in peak months would spend seven or eight thousand, but we never maxed out on the ten even with that account.

That’s how we kind of got into it, and it just really made it a mission to tell people about it, whether you use us or not. I just want you to go get the money, because no nonprofit has $10,000 a month that I’ve run across. “Here’s $10,000 extra, let’s go buy advertising.” It’ll help your mission, it’ll help you recruit volunteers, it’ll do all the things that you wish you could do, and Google’s going to let you do it and not cost you any money.

Tobi: Yeah. I mean, if I could get $10,000 in free ad money, I would. Let me explain to folks a little bit: when you get a Google Grant, you’re basically getting free pay‑per‑click advertising. Whenever you go on to Google and search for something, you’ll see all these sponsored results pop up. These are paid ads for the most part. If they’re nonprofits, then they probably have a Google Grant.

If I, as a small business person, could have a Google Grant, I’m telling you right now, I would be all over it. I did pay for Google pay‑per‑click advertising when we first started Volunteer Pro, the digital side of Tobi Johnson and Associates, back in 2015, because our website was new and if I didn’t drive a lot of traffic to our website, nobody would ever find it. So we did invest early on in Google Ads, and I might return back to it, but they’re more expensive than Facebook Ads. If you’ve done any other advertising on social media, whether it’s LinkedIn or Facebook Ads, Google Ads are generally more expensive. But if you want to show up where people are searching, this is the way to go. And nonprofits can get grants where you can get all this pay‑per‑click free advertising and get the word out.

Clay, most people think of this type of pay‑per‑click advertising for fundraising, for events, for that side of the house. They might have their development department working on it; they might have a Google Grant where they’re doing fundraising through it; they might use it only for their year‑end campaigns or special events, or maybe they have a capital campaign going. But how can it be used to recruit volunteers, which is what we want to talk about today?

Clay: It will let people find you. I truly believe that people want to volunteer. Or you may have a high school senior that just has to have volunteer hours, and their mama is like, “Well, I don’t know where to send you. Let me go Google it.” They’re going to put in their search bar “places to volunteer” in the name of your town. This will help you get found.

But it’s a whole piece of the pie. It’s a whole big picture. You’ve got to be running those ads all the time and talking about all the things. Even when you’re talking about your annual banquet and you’re trying to get people to know about that, when people see that, they’re seeing your name, they’re liking what you do, so then when they are ready to volunteer, they may even Google your name instead of just a nonprofit.

Google requires you to log in to your account once a month. Part of that, I say it’s easy, and it’s still easy. There is one requirement: you have to log in because they want you to have an active ad. You can have your nonprofit one always running 365 days a year. But when your annual banquet comes up, or your drawdown, or your work day, or your community disposal day, all of those ads need to be created, and they all work together. The annual banquet ad will funnel people to you as a volunteer through that top‑of‑mind awareness, just knowing that you exist, just seeing you. That’s what marketing is. No matter how long ago, before computers were even invented, they still had a class somewhere that talked about impressions. Your professor would say you want someone to see it eight times before it clicks.

So the Google Grant gives a nonprofit that ability to stay out there. You just keep seeing their name, and that helps on the volunteerism. Now, you will have people that have never heard of you that just want to volunteer, and they may find you for the first time. That’s great too. But you want to take the Google Ad Grant program and map it out a little bit, like what ads are going to run when, and make sure you can have a couple of sets running at any given time depending on how busy your nonprofit is during that quarter of that month.

Tobi: Yeah, I love this idea of multi‑touch marketing and omnipresent marketing, where folks might see you on social media, they might see you at a tabling event, a friend might talk about you, they might have even been to your nonprofit or driven by. When the time comes that they think to themselves, “You know what, I want to volunteer” or “I want to donate,” they’ll type into Google the name of your nonprofit. One of the ads to have evergreen is just the keyword of the name of your nonprofit, so they can go to your homepage. That’s sort of a general baseline where people can find you and you become top of mind.

“What’s going on with that nonprofit right now?” People are sitting around binging Netflix on their couch with their phone in their hand, or watching TV with their family, and people who like to be on their phone will just be browsing around. A thought will come to their mind. They’ll go into Google and go, “What about blah, blah, blah?” I mean, this is what people do. When they’re thinking about those types of thoughts, “What about volunteering? What about that nonprofit?”

Clay, what makes search traffic from a Google Grant, this pay‑per‑click advertising, so effective for locating not only people who are kind of like “let me learn about this nonprofit, let me see what they’re up to,” but people who are like, “You know what, I want to volunteer right now”? What makes a Google Grant or Google the best place to advertise for that kind of thing?

Clay: Well, Google learns us. So they know what we’re looking for, probably maybe sometimes before you do, I feel like it. So they’re going to immediately pick up on what you’re searching for. If you didn’t have that Google Ad Grant, Google doesn’t know you exist either. And that’s a big piece of the puzzle too.

For nonprofits listening and embracing this, I would do a little research on your website. What works? Because Google has a lot of different things that they’re looking for that will make your grant more effective. They want you to be updating your website. And in the nonprofit world, the more places that are linking to your website, so let’s say your local chamber is linking back to you; they call it your DA score, your domain authority. If you’re linking back to other nonprofits, you’re linking back to your Main Street program, Google starts recognizing that. They’re like, “Hmm, this website is talking about this website.” They’re going to organically move you up some.

Then when you have that Google Ad Grant and people are seeing what you’re doing, they’re searching for stuff, and all that spider web of Google, it’s gonna make you come up. Because theoretically, you’re not gonna be the only one running Google Grant ads for volunteers. So you’re still in the race to be the first top result. So it is a time commitment. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Now, you can set those Google Ad Grants and you may have 30 minutes a month to go update them; you’re still going to get a positive net result from them. But if you can read the next blog on what Google is looking for, and speaking of blogs, they want a blog on your website that you update once a week, once a month, whatever you can do. I could talk for 24 hours about the things that Google wants and what you could do, but hours in the day are some kind of factor as well.

Tobi: Yeah. Pay‑per‑click advertising: it’s not that you’re not gonna show up in the organic search results. You might show up, scroll way down to find you, or you might already enjoy one of the top spots. If somebody typed into Google “volunteer opportunities in Knoxville, Tennessee,” your nonprofit might show up at the top organically because a lot of people point their websites to you, you get a lot of traffic, you have a blog, all these things. But if you add advertising, you’re actually adding fuel to the fire and you’re showing up in more places. It also increases what we call your organic search. So you get the bonus of paid, sponsored ads at the top of the page, but you also get the benefit of better search engine optimization (SEO).

Can you give us an example, Clay, of how a Google Grant might be used to recruit volunteers? Like, what are the specifics that people would want to think about?

Clay: You would want to be very intentional about it. If you’re talking about, you’ve launched your ad, you may have your tagline in the text and a specific call to action. But when they click that, you don’t have to send them to your homepage. Because if they’re thinking about volunteerism and they go to your homepage and your homepage is all about your next big event and they’ve got to find the drop‑down, come up with a landing page.

So when somebody clicks on “volunteerism,” what opens up is how to volunteer in a very simple form, or a click to call, or just call, or if you have a once‑a‑month volunteer meeting, all that information is super, super easy to find. The fewer clicks, the better. In fact, the goal is: click the ad and there’s the information that they want to see. That would probably be the most important thing. You would be surprised how many people click a link and it goes to their home page, and unless your home page is about volunteerism or how to volunteer and you can see it right there, you’re going to lose people. Our attention span is crazy short. There are a lot of studies on how many clicks we will make, and it’s a low number. It’s not “click here, drop down, click here.”

So create a landing page about volunteerism that, when you talk about it, it doesn’t just have to be for your Google Grant. If you’re on social media making a post that says, “Our big annual banquet’s coming up, we need 12 people at the check‑in table,” and you put that same link, it can be used in social media, and they can link right back to there. I picked a bunch on Main Street, if you send it to your Main Street director and they put it in their email blast, that link is a great resource. Have a dedicated page, and then use that link and not your home page.

Tobi: Yeah, we do a lot of training in our Volunteer Pro Impact Lab around; and when I do coaching and consulting with clients, we’ll talk about volunteer recruitment hub pages. It’s sort of like a website within a website. You’ll have your main volunteering page, and then you can set up separate sub‑pages if you have multiple volunteer opportunities. Maybe you have an opportunity for corporate groups, maybe you have an event coming up (that’s a different page), maybe you have a tutoring program that’s ongoing volunteers. You can have that main page that links, but you can also link to those key opportunity pages if that’s who you’re recruiting for right now.

You don’t even need to just do a general call for volunteers throughout the year with your Google Grant. You could actually map it out and go, “When are we going to focus on each of these roles that we need to fill, and what time of year works best?” Running up to an event, obviously, that’d be a good time. So there are a lot of ways to do it.

I totally agree. On nonprofit websites, one of the biggest challenges I see is that there’s no mention of volunteering at all. It’s generally there, but it’s in the “Get Involved” drop‑down, and people are like diving in. I worked with a science museum once. They had, I don’t know, 6,000 or 10,000 people coming to their website every month because they had an IMAX theater and people were buying tickets; it was a big deal. I said, “You know what? You’re getting less than 50 people a month to your volunteer page. Why do you think that is?” Because I did some back‑end looking at the traffic. I said, “There’s no mention of it on your homepage. You’ve got to click forever to find this hidden gem of ‘Guess what? We like volunteers to come help.’”

Even though you’re going to send people in your Google Grant ads directly to volunteer pages, I would also say make sure that on your home page, we have no problem putting a “Donate” button on our home page, no problem whatsoever, but there’s never hardly ever a “Volunteer Now” page. If your organization can’t survive without volunteers, it makes no sense to not include that. Have you seen this? It’s one of my pet peeves. Sorry, I was on a soapbox for a minute.

Clay: No, you just described every nonprofit. You’re dead on with how they do it.

Another thing: as you’re starting to sign up for this grant, you can do testing. The day that you sign up for this, if you’re managing it internally, you’re not going to be a Google Ad expert. But you can launch different ads, and you can see that this one’s getting 22 clicks a day but this one’s getting 400 clicks a day. You’ll be surprised at what works. There’s no silver bullet; we could all make a lot of money if there was. Your nonprofit, what triggers somebody is different from the nonprofit right next door to you. There are different keywords, different reasons somebody wants to get involved.

I would encourage anybody that signs up for it or has it already, it’s free money, run lots more than one ad. For the exact same thing, if you’re sitting there and you’re talking with your board president and you’re not sure which way to go, do them both and see what works.

I also don’t want to make it sound complicated. If you’re brand new to it and you launch one ad, high five. Launch that one ad, learn it, get comfortable with it, and then next month launch two ads. Just get more comfortable with it. I have some people that are a little trigger‑shy on doing it. Just do it, and then we can work to build up to the multiple ads, the testing, the calendar, the schedule, and all the things that will make it the most effective.

Tobi: Yeah, bias towards action, y’all. I talk about this a lot in our Impact Lab. Especially in digital marketing, we just launched a scorecard, a quiz. Folks can go on our website, take the quiz, answer a few questions, and we give them a report that tells them about their maturity level and where they should focus their energy to improve their impact, particularly vis‑à‑vis volunteers. It took us a long time to put this together. At some point I said to my marketing associate, “You know what? We just need to pull the trigger, make it happen, and the data will tell us.” Whatever you do with a Google Ad, it’s not gonna be perfect in the beginning anyway because we can’t read minds.

Clay: That’s it.

Tobi: When you’re setting up a Google Ad, you can search by keywords: what are the words people are typing into Google to find something? I would start with “volunteer opportunities” and then your name, your hometown name, or “with kids,” or “with animals,” or “for teens”, whatever you think people are looking for. You can look in Google and they’ll tell you how many people in your area are typing that in (or in the world, or in the U.S.). So they’ll give you hints about what might work. When people type that into Google, your ad will show up at the top, not every time, but a lot of times.

Let’s take a quick break, Clay, and we’re going to come back and talk a little bit more about how volunteer managers can work with marketing and communications departments (who are often wearing many hats and are busy) but it is important that they collaborate, or with their fundraising folks. We’ll talk a little bit about that after the break. Does that sound good?

Clay: Sounds good.

Tobi: All right, gang, we’ll be back right after this break with our chat with Clay Mansell about Google Grants and how they can be leveraged to recruit volunteers. So don’t go anywhere. We will be right back.

Tobi: Okay, we’re back with our discussion with Clay Mansell about how to use Google Grants for volunteer engagement. We’ve been talking a little bit about how we can use this free advertising to let the community know that you have opportunities available. We talked about the importance of landing pages — making sure you have a volunteer page that, when people type into Google, see that ad, and click on it, they don’t go to your website and get lost. Consistency is so important across media, as well as from social media, your newsletter, wherever you’re sending people. Don’t make people have to click a ton when they get to your website.

Clay, when we talk about Google Grants, a nonprofit might already have one, right? How would, I’m a volunteer manager, I’m thinking to myself, “Heck yeah, I want to get free advertising for my volunteer opportunities. This is a no‑brainer.” How do I go about it? Where should they go? I’m assuming marketing, that it might be the fundraising folks. How should they approach this collaboration and find out whether or not a grant exists and how to use it within their own organization?

Clay: We’ve seen that a couple of times. Another thing, which is not actually your question, you see turnover in organizations, and there may be a Google Grant that the current team doesn’t know about. We’ve had that come up once or twice, and it just doesn’t get filtered out. So I would encourage the volunteer coordinator to add that line item to your job description: you’re going to have to be the liaison between marketing, communications, and make sure you’re getting what you need out of it.

Working with them, if you’re on this podcast and you’re like, “I really want this,” go visit with them. If it’s important enough to you, and I can tell you it would be, if you don’t have it, just apply for it for them without ruffling any feathers. Give you kind of the green light. I would hate to see an organization not apply for this grant because we’re not sure who’s supposed to apply for it. Sit down, get everybody in a room, and maybe y’all want to tag team it.

Every organization is so different in how they work, and I’m very well aware there’s at least one organization watching this that probably every single title we just mentioned, that one person wears every title. Their volunteer, communications, marketing, they may be the executive director too. But in an organization that’s blessed to have a larger staff, the volunteer part of this could affect your organization way more than a $50 donation. A $50 donation, that’s great, but you get a volunteer, whether they come around for that same event every year or they’re working the volunteer desk two hours a week for the next 10 years, volunteers are key to organizations.

So I would encourage the volunteer coordinator to work with communications, marketing, the executive director, and show them this podcast and see how you can get the grant kicked off.

Tobi: Is there a way folks can figure out, let’s say everybody’s left the organization (nonprofits do have churn in staff), is there a place where people can check with Google to say, “Do we have a grant that’s active?” or “Can we re‑up a grant?”

Clay: Yeah, hopefully, we run into roadblocks a lot, but hopefully in a nonprofit, you’re using your website as your email address, so you’re like “Clay Mansell at mansellmedia.net.” That proves a lot to Google if you have access to that domain.

I did want to mention real quick that Google has other things for nonprofits: they have Workspace and some YouTube things. That’s for another podcast. I just want to spit that out there. They have other tools for nonprofits that don’t cost anything, even your email and all that. Your email is kind of the key to unlocking it and getting back into your Google Analytics, all the Google things. It’s your email with your domain. Whatever the domain is, if you have an email address at that, that will help you unlock it.

That could be the hardest thing that Google makes you jump through. I said the Google Grant program is really easy, but if you lose access to your Google profile for your nonprofit, it’s an extremely challenging issue to regain control of that. I have PTSD when you say that, because sometimes we spend a lot of hours trying to get access back. It’s not just nonprofits, any organization, somebody that has the keys to it and has not made anybody else, you’re not going to own the Google profile or the analytics page. It does create issues from time to time.

Tobi: So I will link in the show notes to the Google Grants page. If folks are starting from scratch, what do they need to get started to apply for the grant?

Clay: It’ll walk you through it. They’re gonna make you prove a few things, and they have a company, TechSoup, I believe that’s what it is, they’re going to verify. You’re going to give them some information to verify you’re a nonprofit. They’re going to verify your website, make sure you have a legit, functioning website. But again, it’s an easy process, and it’ll walk you through it. You’re going to be pleasantly surprised, if you’ve applied for any other grant, how easy this one is.

Tobi: Yeah. How long does it take to get approved where you can start getting in there and posting ads?

Clay: Not long. Sometimes they’ll kick you back and want something else, or you didn’t do something just right, but you’re looking at days to weeks. It’s not a long process.

Tobi: Excellent, excellent.

When you look at, because you also help nonprofits with this process, and we’ll post info to Mansell Media and a link to Clay’s profile, LinkedIn, if you want to connect with him, when you look at folks who’ve gone ahead, gotten a grant, or re‑energized, or started using an existing grant that they’ve been using for fundraising all along, when folks start working with recruitment of volunteers in particular and posting ads around that, what do you think separates people who get real results from people who don’t? What are the top things that once people get started, they need to really think about?

Clay: Getting started. Most nonprofits are not recruiting volunteers at all. That’s what we see. You even saw it after COVID, they lost their base. I deal with several nonprofits that really almost function now without volunteers. I’ve really talked to them about that in detail: it’s okay now to start asking again. I know in 2020, 2021, it was a little weird; let’s not ask for volunteers. But we’ve not gotten over that in the nonprofit world.

If you were in Mississippi, if you were to measure our volunteers, significantly down than what it was in 2019. If you start asking for volunteers through your social medias, through your websites, through your Google Ad Grant program, you will see people that are excited that you asked them. They’re wanting to volunteer. They miss it. But it’s also a hard proposition, just pick up the phone and call an organization and say, “Hey, I’m interested in volunteering.” The organization needs to put the ask out. Once you put the ask out, whatever organization is putting the ask out, they’re going to reap the rewards and get those volunteers who have been wanting to volunteer for the last year.

Tobi: Yeah, it’s also important. I do a little bit when I’m doing training, I’ll look at the most recent Google Trends (y’all can go check this out; I’m going to put a link to it in the show notes). I’ll look at Google Trends for the search term “volunteer opportunities near me.” It’s generic; a lot of people use that term. While it has dropped a bit, it’s maintaining pretty consistently over the past couple of years. Three years ago it was at an all‑time high right after the pandemic, folks were really wanting to get back to volunteering. Now it’s kind of flattened out, a little bit lower, but it’s still way higher than it was six years ago. So people are really going to Google looking for this resource, looking for a place.

I would also add to what you said: have a rapid response plan at the ready. If people indicate they’re interested, you need to get back with them within one business day. I’m not kidding. So if you’re a team of one who wears many hats, it’s time to bring on a few volunteers to help you with this. Also, if you have some way you can automate a little bit — just let people know, “Hey, we got your application, we got your interest, we’ll be right back”, maybe some way to automate an email just to let people know that you’ve received their interest, or have them book a call with you right from a link on your website. Have people go straight to your website and book a 15‑minute call with you, so you’re not asking people to email back and forth. Or if you have, like you said, an annual or a monthly volunteer meeting, just put an RSVP where people can RSVP. Don’t make people go back and forth.

I see so many websites where people say “call so‑and‑so.” I call so‑and‑so, nobody answers, I leave a message, then they call me, I can’t answer, they leave a message, back and forth, same with email. People nowadays want instant results. You’re capturing lightning in a bottle when somebody’s really excited about volunteering. That’s the moment that they have that impulse to help. You need to capture that.

I love the opportunity, the kind of blue ocean opportunity, that’s there for folks. If nobody else is advertising on Google for volunteers, your ad is going to show a lot, and your organization is going to be the beneficiary of people who are interested.

When people have, let’s say they started doing their Google Ads and they’re not seeing results, what do you recommend then? If they’re like, “Look, I did what Clay said, I got the Google Grant, I put the ads up, people aren’t responding,” what do you think is usually the problem there?

Clay: It could be your website; we mentioned that. It’s got to be super easy. If you have an unlimited amount of money, which is basically what’s going to happen when you get your Google Grant, you should see an increase. You should feel it. Whether the phone that rang three times a day is now ringing four times, the email should be coming in, or your contact form, however you’re doing it. If you’re not, revisit that grant, revisit the ads, and launch multiples.

There’s no way, when you basically have an unlimited amount of money and you’re putting your organization out there, that you won’t see something. Now, it may not happen immediately; it may not happen day one, because Google’s going to learn your ads and your grant, and they’re going to crawl your website and figure things out. You’ll probably even get a message that it may say it’s in “learning.” They change how they do it about every five minutes with Google. But it will take a little bit of days to do it.

Within that first 30‑day window, if you were to look back at your analytics (if your analytics are set up on your website), you should see it; you should feel it. There will be a marked increase in all the visits to your website, your phone calls, your contact forms. It’s a big piece of pie, a big piece of money that you’ve got. So you’ll feel it. If you don’t, we need to adjust and make sure it’s serving. You’ll get a report; you can look and make sure that it has served.

Another thing: your ad can get kicked back. Let’s say you have an event with guns or liquor, it will kick you out. We do a private school that actually doesn’t qualify for the Google Ad Grant (they do have Google Ads). Well, they did a raffle, and one of the raffles was a gun. That violates all sorts of rules. We had our social media ads get rejected, and I knew it, but I just didn’t think about it. So there are things that will happen. This is a little bit more on the social media side, but if your ads are not set to serve above 21 and let’s say you have a bourbon tasting, you’re going to create all sorts of issues. That’s good information if you’re brand new to the Google world and social media ads as well. There are weird things that could happen that could pause your ads. That’s why the grant requires you to log in once a month, so you’re monitoring that, looking at any errors. They’ll start suggesting stuff to you; you’ll get lots of suggestions on what you should be doing with your grant or with your ad. Be watching for those and learn. As they say, “Consider this keyword.” You may say, “That’s not me,” and you can X out of it. But if you’re like, “Man, I should have thought about that,” be sure to add it to your keywords.

Tobi: I think too, you get to control what copy you put in the results: the title, the link that people click on, you can control what that says, and the description underneath it. You have to keep it within a certain limited number of characters, but you can control that. I can’t tell you how many comms audits I’ve done for nonprofits where I see that they haven’t paid attention to that description of their page, it’s called a snippet or a meta description. You’ll see something generic or the first sentence that’s on that web page, because Google’s just taking whatever’s there since you haven’t specified it.

You can set up multiple ads and just play around with your call to action and see which works. The cool thing is data doesn’t lie, especially online. People are going to click or not click. They’re going to resonate with what you’re saying or they’re not. Pretty quickly you can see, “That’s not working, we’re not going to do that anymore. Let’s try this. This one’s working really well.” So you have to be a little bit of a, I think of a “scientist” (I don’t want to use that term because it’s freaking people out right now), but marketing is a 360‑degree process. You think you know what your audience wants to hear. You put it out there, you wait, and you see what happens. When they respond, it’s either they’re responding or they’re not, or they’re not responding in the right way. You make tweaks. That’s just normal. People should never feel like they’re failing at any of this marketing strategy, because the only failure is not trying it and then making adjustments as you go. If you don’t do that, then you are failing. But other than that, some things aren’t going to fly. They’re just not going to fly, and then you’ll know, okay, that doesn’t fly, but this other thing does.

Clay: And it’ll be fun to figure that out. You’re going to learn stuff about your organization that you may not have known, like what resonates with your followers. Sometimes it almost upsets you. Like, “Well, I had no idea that that was it.” You spent three hours on this ad, and you threw this one up, and those were the words that work. That’s when you’re scrolling, when you look at Google, you’re just glancing at that headline. So experiment with what works on that headline, and then the description is right under it.

Tobi: Yeah, absolutely. I would say stay away from “volunteers needed.” Everybody says that. Stand out, have some personality, and be specific about what you want. “Volunteers needed”, well, everybody says that. That’s not standing out.

I was doing a training, making the distinction between the way your audience probably thinks and the keywords they use versus the keywords you use on your side, your organization. Perfect example: nonprofits are so wonky and also very acronym‑focused. People who work in animal shelters, for example, will call the work they do “animal welfare.” So they’ll go, “Animal welfare volunteers needed.” Well, volunteers out in the community are saying “volunteer dog walker.” That’s what they’re typing into Google. They’re not saying “animal welfare volunteers.” So you will learn the colloquialisms and what your audience, they may talk about your nonprofit, your cause impact area, in a way, using words that you never would have thought of.

Clay: That’s a really good point because we’re all guilty of that. In marketing, I use words that the general public just doesn’t. So yeah, that’s a good thought.

Tobi: Yeah. Well, Clay, this has been super helpful. Thank you so much for spending your time with us and giving us some of your insights.

Folks, if you haven’t yet decided to do this, please do it. This is one of the biggest opportunities that’s missed by most nonprofits when it comes to volunteer recruitment. Where do you find volunteers? You find them on Google. It doesn’t matter what age they are. Everybody’s using Google. Some platforms, like TikTok, are going to be younger volunteers, not seniors. Google, everybody uses Google. So it’s a great place to go to find volunteers. If we haven’t talked you into it yet, you’re being resistant. I’m just gonna say: flip the script and get an opportunity and abundance mindset going, because you can make this happen.

Clay, I like to always ask as I close out with folks what they are most excited about in the year ahead. So I’m gonna ask you that. What excites you most about this coming year, the rest of 2026? It can be anything, business or personal.

Clay:
Business‑wise, Mansell Media has just got a cool niche going for us. We get lots of referrals, and we see that. That’s exciting for a business owner when other customers are referring you. That’s very fulfilling. Personally, I’ve got three kids, five, twelve, and seventeen, that I love chasing and watching their sporting events. Summer’s fixing to be here, so we’re looking forward to that and trying to find a few more hours in each day so we can get it all done.

Tobi: I hear you. I hear you with that.

How can folks get, maybe their nonprofit wants to dive in and they want to have some expert guidance and work with a media company. How can folks get in touch with you if they’re interested in exploring working with you around Google Grants, or maybe it’s something else — maybe it’s a social media strategy, maybe it’s their website? What’s the best way to get in touch?

Clay: Yeah, absolutely. If you Google us, we’re going to be the first search result. If you Google “Mansell Media,” we’ll come up. But our website is mansellmedia.net. It’s got chat features, and our phone number’s all over it. I’d love for you to reach out. I’d love to hear from you if you set the Google Grant ad up yourself, let me know how it went. Or if you just have a single question, you can reach out to us through there. All our contact information’s on our website. It’d be the best way to find us.

We actually have a cool phone system: when you call our phone number, it forwards to our cell phones if we’re not in the office. So we are super easy to track down.

Tobi: That’s awesome. Talk about a rapid response plan, y’all.

Clay: I wasn’t going to say, you said the rapid response plan. For nonprofits, that’s great advice for everything they do. Think about a donor, or just a question about an event or buying a ticket. People want that instant response. So set it up on all aspects of your nonprofit.

Tobi: Yeah. I mean, people just don’t, folks will ask me, I’ll say one business day. One business day, seriously. People will not wait anymore, and they’ll be off to the next nonprofit that gets back to them quicker. The other thing is people are volunteering for more than one organization. But we could go down that rabbit hole; we’re not going to.

Clay, this has been a fantastic conversation again. Those of you who are listening: if you do not or are not leveraging your Google Grant — if you have one already and you’re not leveraging it for volunteers and volunteer recruitment, or you don’t have one yet and you haven’t applied, let’s get to it. If you need volunteers, this is a no‑brainer for you. So get to it.

If you need help, reach out to Clay, talk to him. If you tried it and it didn’t work and you’re embarrassed, it’s okay. Clay already told you: you can get in touch with him. He will not, no judgment zone. We do what we’ve got to do with what we have when we have it. I’m sure Clay’s group would be happy to help you as well.

Thanks for joining me today. If you listened to this and thought it was helpful and maybe you want your marcomms folks, your fundraising folks, your executive director, or whoever to have a listen and get the bug about Google Grants, please refer them to this.

If you liked this episode, give us a rating, we like five‑star ratings because that means we get shown to more people on the podcast platforms. We also like to get a review and hear what you think about the show. If you’ve enjoyed this, let us know. Join us next week, same time, same place on the Volunteer Nation. Take care, everybody. And thanks, Clay, for joining us.

Clay: Absolutely. I appreciate it. Thank you.