A Google Ad Grant is one of the best deals in nonprofit marketing: up to $10,000 a month in free search advertising, indefinitely, as long as the account stays in good standing. That last part is where things can get tricky. Google enforces Ad Grants policy automatically, often without warning, and a suspended account can sit dark for weeks while an organization scrambles to figure out what happened.
Below are the 20 most common reasons Ad Grant accounts are deactivated or suspended, grouped by category so you can scan for your own risk areas. Each one is checked against Google’s current published policy, linked throughout.
Compliance & Performance Violations
1. Click-through rate below 5%
Every Ad Grants account (other than those running exclusively on Smart campaigns) must maintain a 5% account-level click-through rate each month, per the account management policy. It’s measured across the whole account, not keyword by keyword, but two consecutive months under 5% triggers a temporary deactivation. Performance Max campaigns are exempt from this calculation, which is worth keeping in mind if you’re weighing whether to add one.
2. Missing or broken conversion tracking
Accounts created after January 1, 2018, and any account using Smart Bidding must have valid conversion tracking that records at least one conversion per month. Donations, volunteer sign-ups, event registrations, newsletter sign-ups, and petition completions all count; vanity metrics like time-on-site have to be excluded from the “Conversions” column.
3. Manual bidding instead of Smart Bidding
Accounts created on or after April 22, 2019 are required to run every campaign on Maximize Conversions, Maximize Conversion Value, Target CPA, or Target ROAS, unless the campaign is a Smart campaign, per the same account management policy. Non-compliant campaigns don’t just get flagged; Google will automatically adjust the bid strategy.
4. Low Quality Score keywords left active
Any keyword with a Quality Score of 1 or 2 must be paused or removed, per the Ad Grants Policy Compliance Guide. It’s one of the easier violations to catch, but only if someone’s actually checking Quality Scores on a regular cadence, which is exactly the kind of routine monitoring accounts tend to skip.
5. Ignoring the annual program survey
Once a year, Google sends a program survey to the email address on file for the account. Not responding is grounds for deactivation; one more reason to make sure account notifications go to an inbox someone actually monitors.
Keyword & Targeting Restrictions
6. Single-word keywords
Under the mission-based keyword policy, single-word keywords are blocked outright, with narrow exceptions for your own brand terms, recognized medical conditions, and a short published exception list. Terms with dashes or punctuation don’t count as “single word,” but plain broad terms do.
7. Overly generic keywords
Even multi-word keywords can run afoul of the same mission-based policy if they’re too broad to reflect your organization’s actual mission. Think generic commercial phrases rather than anything tied to your programs.
8. Bidding on competitor or trademarked terms
Bidding on another organization’s brand or trademarked terms without authorization violates standard Google Ads policy, which every Ad Grants account remains subject to in addition to Ad Grants-specific rules.
9. Geo-targeting outside your actual service area
Ads have to be targeted to locations where people will actually find your services useful, not “all countries and territories.” A national brand-awareness campaign can justify wider targeting, but your core campaigns should map to where you actually operate.
Account Structure Faults
10. Fewer than two active campaigns
Google requires at least two running campaigns per account as a baseline structural standard.
11. Fewer than two ad groups per campaign
Each campaign needs at least two active ad groups, each built around a tight cluster of related keywords.
12. Fewer than two ads per ad group
Every active ad group needs at least two active ads (responsive search ads, since expanded text ads were retired).
13. Missing sitelink extensions
Worth a correction here: some guides circulating online cite a minimum of 4 sitelinks. Google’s current published requirement (same Policy Compliance Guide as above) is a minimum of two active sitelink assets at the account level, though using more is good practice, since sitelinks tend to lift CTR.
Landing Page & Website Technicalities
14. Unverified or unreadable phone numbers
Phone numbers that Google can’t verify, or that are embedded as images rather than text, can create compliance and ad-quality issues.
15. Sending traffic to an unapproved domain
Your nonprofit has to own, meaning have real administrative control over, every domain your ads point to. Sending clicks to a domain that wasn’t part of your original grant setup is a compliance problem.
16. Broken, slow, or flagged landing pages
The same website policy specifically calls out thin or duplicated content, broken navigation or dead links (especially on donation buttons), missing HTTPS, and pages that fail mobile-friendliness checks. Any of these can jeopardize the account, independent of ad performance.
17. Landing pages built around commercial activity
Pages primarily focused on selling products or generating profit, rather than furthering nonprofit programs, don’t meet the website policy’s bar.
Account Management & Trust
18. Account inactivity
Google expects at least one login a month, and at least one meaningful optimization change every 90 days. An account nobody touches is exactly the kind of thing that quietly falls out of compliance across several categories at once.
19. Adding billing details to a grant account
Ad Grants accounts are funded by the $ 10,000-per-month grant, not by a credit card. Entering billing information can shift the account into paid-account territory or flag it for review.
20. Running multiple accounts or trying to game reviews
Setting up a second Google Ads account for the same nonprofit, or attempting to circumvent Google’s automated compliance checks, is treated as a policy violation in its own right.
The pattern underneath all twenty
Almost every one of these traces back to one of three root causes: nobody is logging in regularly, conversion tracking was never set up properly, or the account structure was built once and never revisited. Google’s enforcement here is largely automated; many suspensions happen without any advance notice, so the accounts that stay healthy are the ones with a standing monthly (or weekly) check-in, not the ones that only look at Ad Grants when something breaks.
If you manage this for your own organization, a quarterly structural audit — CTR trend, conversion tracking health, keyword Quality Scores, account structure, and website compliance — catches most of this before Google does.
Note: Google updates Ad Grants policy periodically, most recently shifting nonprofit eligibility verification from TechSoup to Goodstack. It’s worth spot-checking Google’s Ad Grants Help Center against any audit checklist, including the one linked to in this post, before treating it as final.
This is part of a bigger pattern.
Ad Grants compliance is just one slice of a much larger challenge: digital advertising has more moving parts than most organizations can track, and Google’s automated enforcement doesn’t wait for anyone to catch up.
That was the throughline of our three-part June 2026 webinar series for public media professionals:
101 – Foundations (June 11) — what has to be in place before you spend a dollar, including GA4 setup, organic vs. paid, and platform selection
201 – In Practice (June 18) — conversion events, funnel structure, retargeting, and why attribution is harder than it looks
301 – Advanced (June 25) — platform strategy across Meta, Google, TikTok, CTV, and beyond
The 301 session made a point worth repeating here: for most stations, the Google Ad Grant is the most underused asset they have, sitting well under the $10,000/month ceiling, or not running at all, largely because staying in compliance (see: the 20 items above) takes ongoing attention many internal teams don’t have the capacity for.
The pattern holds across every channel, not just Ad Grants: the tools are more powerful than ever and more failure-prone than ever if nobody’s watching them closely.
Run the audit yourself.
Want to check your own account against all 20 items? Download our free Google Ad Grants Compliance Checklist — the same 20 checks from this article, formatted as a quick self-audit you can work through in one sitting.
Need help keeping your account compliant?
The CBA team works with nonprofits at every stage of their Google Ad Grants account, from initial setup to ongoing compliance monitoring. If you’d like a second set of eyes on your account, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Sources
From Google for Nonprofits Help:
Account management policy
Ad Grants Policy Compliance Guide
Mission-based campaigns (keyword policy)
Ad Grants single keyword policy exceptions
Website policy
Need help keeping your account compliant?
The CBA team works with nonprofit and public media organizations at every stage of their Google Ad Grants account, from initial setup to ongoing compliance monitoring. If you’d like a second set of eyes on your account, don’t hesitate to contact us.