Google for Nonprofits: A MyCom screencast

Welcome to this MyCom screencast. We're going to be exploring Google for Nonprofits.

Google for Nonprofits will allow you to have a fully featured business suite, including email and website and storage for free. In addition, if you apply for the Google Ad Grant, your church or church organization can receive $10,000 in free Google ads.

You're going to begin the process before you go to the Google for Nonprofits website, by going to umgroupruling.org. That is where you can get the paperwork to prove your nonprofit status for Google.

In addition to that, you will need your EIN ― employer identification number. Once you have those two things, you can go to google.com/nonprofits and click “Get Started.”

Once you click “Get Started, we encourage you to create your own new account for this business and use that to sign in and do the entire process.

You'll step through the process, uploading your documents, and then you'll wait a couple of days for notification in your email that Google has approved your nonprofit status. At that point, you'll go back to the Google for Nonprofits page and click “Sign In.” Once you sign in, you'll be taken to the Google for Nonprofits landing page.

This is very important. You have been approved for a Google for Nonprofits account, but you have not been approved for the $10,000 ad grant. You have to do an additional application. To do that, you'll go where it says “Google Ad Grants.” There will be an option for you to sign up and apply for the ad grant. You'll need the same documentation as you did when you applied for the Google for Nonprofits account in order to receive the ad grant.

Wait a couple of days and you'll receive an email from Google Ads inviting you into your ad grant account. Creating Google ads is another very involved process that will be its own screencast later.

Let's jump into the Google for Nonprofits dashboard.

You do that by going to admin.google.com. You'll sign in with your account and you'll be brought to the homepage of your admin account.

Here you ca see, at a glance, a number of different features in your admin console. Your Google for Nonprofits account will likely center on this one pane, the user pane. You'll simply click “Add a User” and fill out their name.

The secondary email address and phone number can be used to send the new user their initial invite with their password. If you do not fill that out, you'll be brought to a page where you can copy the password and send that to them in another way.

Going back to the homepage, on the left-hand navigation pane, you can click “Apps” and see a number of different apps in the Google workspace that everyone has available to them ― from Calendar to Classroom, Drive and Docs, Gmail, all the way through to Google Tasks.

Let's take a minute and look at the exciting features that you have in Drive and Docs.

Many people are already using Google Drive and Google Docs to manage their organizations. The problem is when you have files on Google Drive that are in someone's personal Google Drive and then that person leaves the organization, your organization loses access to those Google Docs unless the person transfers ownership to someone else.

Now that you have a Google for Nonprofits account, you can do that yourself simply by clicking “Drive and Docs” and scrolling down to “Transfer ownership.” You can transfer the ownership of all of the Google Drive documents that are in their organizational email account to another user.

This way you won't lose access to all those important brainstorming documents and attendance spreadsheets. They will all be housed here.

If you have more than one or two employees, if you have more than one or two people involved in the running of your organization, Groups for Business is a fantastic tool.

Groups for Business takes groups of users and puts them together so that it is easy to share documents with everyone in a specific group, to email that specific group, to chat with that specific group and do all of the things without accidentally leaving one person off.

One great thing about Google Groups is that you will be allowed to change the members of that group dynamically, as new people are added to the finance team, or added to the planning team or whatever group that you have involved.

Click on “Directory,” then on “Groups,” and then click “Create a Group.” Add an owner. Then you can create the access type, which kinds of access that group members have.

They have public groups; teams that allow anyone in the organization to post to the group; groups that are announcement only, where only the owners and managers can post to the group; a restricted group that makes it not easy to join but much more secure; as well as allowing you the option to create custom permissions. It can even allow people outside of your organization to join the group if you have people who are not necessarily employees but who might need access to what's happening in the group.

Once you've started the group, you can add members very simply by putting the person's name in and adding them to the group. Now, anywhere that a person's name can be put in, this group can be put in and all the members will be added to the message or document or chat or other Google service.

One of the fun tools that you have access to in Google for Nonprofits is Jam Board.

Wherever you are signed in, simply click the Google Apps button in the top right corner. Scroll down to Jam Board and you'll be taken to the Google Jam Board interface.

You can create a new jam board by clicking the “+” button. Then you're brought to this dynamic whiteboard.

Of course, this is fun to do by yourself, but the real power is when you use this digital whiteboard to collaborate live with other people.

You simply click “Share” and share it like you would a Google Doc. Then everybody can be live on this, collaborating in real time.

If you're on a Zoom call or another type of video conference, many of those video conferences also have whiteboard technology. What's great about this is that it's all stored in your Google Drive, and you now have access to it organization wide.

If someone leaves the organization, you can transfer ownership of these files to the organization so that you don't lose this vital planning and brainstorming.

Here you can add images, draw, point as you're talking, even put sticky notes.

I hope this has helped you understand and explore your Google for Nonprofits account. There are a ton of features here. We hope that you will spend some time looking through this incredible resource for your church community.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai. Edited for further clarity.