SDF Case Study
3 min to read ✭
About The San Diego Foundation
The San Diego Foundation promotes social change in the San Diego area by maximizing the impact of charitable giving. They do this primarily through grantmaking.
In the past 40 years, the Foundation has granted more than $1 billion to local charitable organizations to grow San Diego into a more vibrant region.
Website: www.sdfoundation.org
Most Critical Business Problem
With our partnership, the San Diego Foundation (SDF) wanted to increase the amount of Donor Advised Fund applications coming through their website. It costs $25,000 minimum to open a DAF with the San Diego Foundation. To do this, they needed to increase web traffic of qualified potential donors and qualify for the first page of Google in a very competitive environment.
The Challenge
We knew going that there was a high level of competition for Donor Advised Funds in the San Diego area. Most organizations, like Fidelity for example, bid over $10.00 to show ads for the search term “Donor Advised Funds.” With the Grant, nonprofits are only allowed to bid a maximum of $2.00 on any search.
Community Boost’s Solution
Google Ad Grant Qualification & Buildout
We helped SDF get approved for $10,000 in monthly advertising on Google to increase traffic of potential donors, and built a robust campaign to get their account momentum going strong.
Result – New Donor Traffic Increase
New website traffic visiting their key donor pages increased by over 200% between June 2016 and November 2016.
Deep AdWords Optimizations & Strategy
To get exposure for the search term “Donor Advised Funds,” we continuously optimized the AdWords account to improve the end-user experience. Google will reward accounts following best practices by showing their ads even if they aren’t able to bid as high as their competitors!
Result – Front Page of Google
We built enough account momentum through relentless effort to get SDF on the front page of Google for the search term “Donor Advised Fund” in San Diego.
The Bottom Line
These actions led to six Donor Advised Fund applications coming through from the Google Grant between November 2016 and January 2017. Don’t forget, it costs $25,000 to open a fund with the San Diego Foundation!
We proved that even with expensive search terms in a competitive & local environment, the Google Ad Grant can drive qualified traffic and convert them into new donors of your cause.
