Well, well .. it surely wasn’t due to my previous posting on this site but Google have extended the offer they make to US non-profits to the charitable sector in the UK. This is a seriously beneficial development for the whole sector provided you’re happy to share your data with this behemoth. http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/nonprofits/

As well as the afore-mentioned and seriously useful Google Apps with it’s myriad forms – most importantly EMail, Group-working, Shared Calendars and Cloud-based documents that can be shared in real time there are now 3 other charity specific offers.

• ‘Google Grants’: Using the feature that made Google all their money, charities can target keywords that people search for to throw up adverts that target their own websites and internet-based donation mechanisms.
• YouTube : The ability to ‘brand’ a YouTube channel and have donation tools that work with the videos you put up of your organisation’s work
• Google Earth (Outreach Grants): Free licenses to use Google mapping tools that allow customised maps of, say, charity project sites with the ability to add resources behind the map. Parts of this offer may only currently be available to members of this programme if they applying for a google grant.

Although the programme is called Google for Non-Profits, eligibility is dependant on being Charity Commission registered – so campaign organisations, CICs and so forth will still have to pay £33 + VAT per user per year to get the Google Apps package.