Remember when Google Grants felt like manna from Heaven? My, how the “Don’t be evil” days are but a distant memory…
We would never look a gift horse in the mouth—get in there and do what you can with Google Grants (more on that to come)—but know this: it takes money to raise money. And that includes paid ads. According to M+R Benchmarks, nonprofits increased spending on digital advertising by 11% in 2024, continuing a long-term trend of growing investment.
But when you’re committed to investing as much of your donor dollars into the mission as possible, those ad dollars have to streeeeeeetch.
There’s no crystal ball to reveal the most efficient, perfect media plan for nonprofits. Every combination of cause, organization, audience, and social context is different. Finding what works best for your organization will take patience and some experimentation. And the variables are always changing; improving or simply maintaining ad performance means continuously monitoring and adjusting. There is no set-it-and-forget-it option (no, not even with AI).
As we look ahead to 2026 and how we might advise clients to get the most out of their media dollars, let’s take a dive into where the industry winds are blowing.
We bet there’s room to increase your investment in lead generation (aka growing your email list)
Looking to M+R Benchmarks once again, overall, 72% of digital ad dollars were spent on direct fundraising in 2024, with lead generation only accounting for 10% and awareness ads another 14%. Larger, more established nonprofits account for this breakdown. Smaller nonprofits prioritized budgets quite differently—45% going to awareness and 42% on fundraising.
What they both have in common is a fairly small percentage going toward lead generation, despite its critical role in relationship marketing.
For smaller nonprofits, we would recommend shifting a healthy portion of those awareness dollars into lead generation, and likewise for the big guys, carving some away from fundraising. And like it or not, Meta remains the most cost-efficient option by a healthy margin—$3.20 to YouTube’s $13.85, which was the next best
Explore more of our thoughts on the role of social media in cultivating new leads >
Search and multi-channel ads (i.e. Google) remain tried and true, but make sure you’re spending wisely
Across nearly every category—awareness, fundraising, lead generation—search and multi-channel ads (across which Google dominates) are consistently an efficient option. In fact, search (followed closely by SMS) has had the highest fundraising ROI every single year of M+R Benchmarks.
Let’s dig a little deeper into paid search, however.
Chances are, branded keywords are among the top drivers to your site (If not, kudos to you! That means people are actually discovering you via search). Even when they know exactly where they want to go, an overwhelming majority of internet users don’t get there by typing in the URL, they Google by name.
Let’s do a quick exercise:
- Open a new browser window in incognito mode (if using Chrome, go a step further and log out of Google) to unbias your search as much as possible.
- Search your organization by name.
- Now, how does it rank?
If you’re running ads against branded search terms, you might see something like this (notice the somewhat duplicative results):
Now, we aren’t a nonprofit. We’re competing with other marketing firms for business, and in this example, competitors are also running ads against our name. In this example, running paid search against branded terms is part of both an offensive (for competitors) and defensive (for us) strategy, and it makes good sense. It would be nice, though—and we could all save a lot of money—if competitors weren’t allowed to do this. Feels a little like an arms race in which Google is the only winner.
Let your results and data determine whether it makes sense for you! Users will click on what they see first, and every click on a sponsored result costs money. If there are no competitors in the mix, why spend good money on what could have been a free click? THIS is what your Google Grants account is for.
To level up your Google ad game, invest in non-branded keywords. Brainstorm relevant queries and keywords by imagining how someone might find you if they couldn’t remember your organization’s name, or didn’t even know it yet. The power and intent of search ads is to capture users looking for something you have to offer, but just haven’t discovered you yet. Search ads can connect the dots, becoming a new donor discovery machine.
TikTok ads can be expensive, but there’s still a place for it in your media budget
There is a distinction being made here between “ads” and “ paid media.” We’ll get there.
Eager to take it for a test drive, nonprofits increased spending on TikTok by 59% last year. Overall, it had a dismal $.03 ROI, the lowest reported by M+R Benchmarks, driven by a remarkably high cost per donation ($1,040) and a not-quite-as-high cost per lead ($17.40). It’s difficult to parse whether these numbers are a reflection of grossly overpriced ads, or a miss on the part of nonprofit marketers, or most likely, a bit of both.
TikTok’s own advice to marketers is “Don’t make ads, make TikToks.” Don’t let these off-putting numbers put you entirely off of using a powerful platform. TikTok’s strength is in awareness building. It’s where the largest audience growth is happening, but many nonprofits are still working on how to use it to their advantage.
Just under half of nonprofits have a presence there. Given all the hand-wringing around social media these days (in particular TikTok) and limited resources amid an ever-expanding media landscape, some trepidation is understandable.
And speaking of an ever-expanding landscape, TikTok, with its hyper-charged algorithm, is in itself an ever-expanding landscape where it can be difficult to find an audience.
As with meeting people and expanding your network in real life, it helps to have someone put in a good word. Enter influencers.
Among nonprofits in the M+R Benchmarks study, 52% reported working with influencers to expand their social media reach, including on TikTok. The most common influencer strategy included both paid and unpaid influencers.
Focusing on reaching TikTok users by way of influencers instead of ads makes a ton of sense when you consider the platform’s multifaceted business model.
Explore more of our thoughts on the power of partnering with influencers >
Putting it all together
We know how planning for 2026 can seem like a lot right now; we’re here to help. We’ve worked with clients whose media budgets were itty bitty and some that were real whoppers. Wherever your org lands, we can help you make the most of it.
