Google Grants URL Policy Change

Yesterday, Google Grants changed their URL policy. Going forward, Google Grantees may only promote the one website domain name associated with the registered nonprofit that approved for Google Grants.

Google says it has made this change "to maintain the integrity of our program." More info on the URL policy is here.

NEXT STEPS
Google Grantees must remove any extra domain names from their account by July 2013. After a short grace period, Google will begin enforcing the new policy. Grantees that continue to promote multiple domain names or a domain name not associated with the registered nonprofit will be subject to removal from the Google Grants program.

EXAMPLE
Your organization has the website domain name www.HelpForAnimals.org.

You are allowed to have ads that direct users to subdomains and subfolders within your website, such as your volunteer page, events page, or programs page:
www.subdomain.HelpForAnimals.org/subfolder
www.HelpForAnimals.org/volunteer
www.HelpForAnimals.org/events
www.raceforlife.HelpForAnimals.org

You may not promote an entirely different domain name, such as www.ShopForPets.com or www.AdoptDogs.org.

IDEAS
No doubt this change will be a real challenge for many nonprofits. A few ideas:

1. If you have separate domains for events or fundraisers, link the ads to new pages on your main website, and then send users out to those separate sites. These new pages should describe the other websites, and have prominent click-through buttons for specific areas of the other sites.
2. Move the other sites to a subdomain on your main page (e.g., events.nonprofit.org).
3. Use an i-frame to embed the other sites on the main site. (If you're not familiar with iframes, see here.)