Can we run a paid Google Ads account alongside our Ad Grant?
By Jose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTAAdapted from Chapter 13 of The Nonprofit Ad Grant Handbook · Checked against Google's rules November 3, 2026Yes. Google's rules allow one grant account and a separate paid account, and they must stay separate. Paid makes sense for searches the grant can't win, keywords its rules block, channels outside Search and time-critical moments. When both accounts want the same search, the paid ad shows first, so decide which account owns each kind of search.
Keep the two accounts apart
Google's rules allow an organization to run one grant account and a separate paid account. They must be separate. A grant account can't have payment details added, and an account with payment details can't be activated as a grant.
Keep the paid account apart, and never add a card to the grant.
When paid makes sense
A paid account covers things the grant can't.
- Searches the grant can't win. Some searches are so competitive that grant ads rarely appear for them.
- Keywords the grant's rules block. The grant doesn't allow single-word keywords outside its exceptions, or overly generic ones. A paid account isn't bound by the Ad Grants rules, only by Google's general advertising policies.
- Channels outside Search. YouTube video ads, Display ads on other websites, Demand Gen and remarketing to people who've already visited your site all need a paid account.
- Time-critical moments. An emergency appeal or the last days of the year may need guaranteed top placement, and a paid budget for a few days can put an urgent message where the most people will see it.
Two things don't justify a paid account. The first is a grant account that isn't working. Paid ads won't fix its click-through rate, its conversions or its structure, and they'll cost real money while the problems remain. The second is impatience. A grant account that's three months old and still learning will often grow into searches that look out of reach today.
Before anyone opens a paid account, answer in writing what job paid will do that the grant can't, whether the grant is healthy, how you'll know it worked, who runs it and approves the spending, and when you'll review it. A healthy grant means Search click-through rate above 6%, real conversions recording and the monthly checklist clean.
How the two compete
Grant ads run in a separate auction after paid ads, and they appear either on their own or in positions below paid ads. When your paid account and your grant account both want the same search, the paid ad shows first. What fixes the competition is deciding which account owns each kind of search.
An illustration from the handbook. The youth leadership charity is a composite, not a real organization.
A youth leadership charity ran both accounts, managed by different people. Its program manager noticed that the grant's ads almost never showed in the charity's home state, where most of its programs ran. The paid account bid on many of the same searches there. The grant's impression share was under 20% in its home state and over 50% in neighboring states where the paid account didn't run.
Its development director called a meeting with the two people who ran the accounts. They didn't go through the overlap keyword by keyword. Instead, they agreed a split by job. Search for the charity's programs, brand and donations went to the grant. The paid budget moved to YouTube and to remarketing ads for people who'd visited the program pages without applying.
Checking your own account
Open the campaigns view in the grant account, add the impression share columns, and segment by location, or open the locations report. Places where the grant's impression share is unusually low, while the same campaigns do well elsewhere, should be compared with the paid account's locations.
To find overlap directly, open the keywords view in each account, filter for enabled keywords in enabled Search campaigns, and download the list. Put both lists in one spreadsheet and look for keywords that appear in both, or that are close enough to trigger for the same searches. Then compare each account's search terms report for the same period. Searches that appear in both are overlap, whatever the keyword lists say.
Dividing the work
Split by channel and job, and write the split down. Splitting keyword by keyword rarely works for long, because new keywords get added and broad match reaches into the other account's territory.
| Area | Grant account | Paid account |
|---|---|---|
| Brand searches | Yes, always | Only if others bid on your name |
| Program and service searches | Yes | Only searches the grant can't win |
| Donation searches | Yes | Competitive, high-value terms, and peak periods |
| Remarketing, YouTube, Display | No | Yes |
Brand searches usually have the highest click-through rate in the account, which helps the grant meet the 5% rule, and they're cheap to win. There's no reason to pay for them. The exception is when someone else bids on your name. For donation searches, agree which ones each account covers, and when.
Negative keywords hold the line. In the paid account, add the brand terms and core program searches the grant owns as negatives. In the grant account, add the paid account's competitive donation terms as negatives for the dates paid covers them, if you've agreed that split.
Once a quarter, both account owners look at the overlap again and adjust the split.
Sections 13.1 to 13.4 of the handbook cover when paid makes sense, the full overlap checks, the division-of-work table and a sample email that records the split.
Questions
Doesn't it help to appear twice on the page?
Don't count on it. Google says paid ads show above grant ads when both are eligible, and in the accounts we've looked at, the grant's impressions fell where the paid account bid on the same searches.
Our grant spends only a few hundred dollars a month. Should we add paid?
A paid account is almost certainly the wrong next step. A grant that spends a few hundred dollars a month isn't held back by its budget. Consider paid when the grant is using a large share of its budget with good results and still losing valuable searches it can't win.
What if one agency runs both accounts?
It's simpler, and it isn't automatically safe. An agency can have a reason to favor the paid account, because paid spending is often what its fee is based on. Ask it to show, at each quarterly review, the overlap between the two accounts and the reason for any keyword that appears in both.
See something wrong or out of date? Tell us
Jose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTAJose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTA, is the CEO of 3nity. He founded the company in 2001 to serve the people who serve people, after working as Internet Director at a media network. He built a career website that was acquired by Salem Communications in 2004, and created the 3nity Web Presence Platform. Through Nonprofit Marketing Center, a division of 3nity, he and his team help churches and nonprofits of every kind bring resources and awareness to their missions, including by helping them get the most from the Google Ad Grant.