The Tech Corps hosted a tech training on Google Apps for Nonprofits at the Google Seattle offices on November 7, 2012. During the training, audience members wrote related questions into a shared document for the Tech Corps to later answer. The following are responses to those questions.
Where do I get started signing up for Google Apps for Nonprofits?
www.google.com/nonprofts Click on signup and follow the instructions. Be ready to spend about 1 hour on the initial application process.
Example of how Google Docs can be used as a collaborative tool:
We use google docs for minutes of meetings. Everyone sees and corrects them as we go. And we’re able to approve the minutes at the end of the meeting and lock them as final.
It can also be used as a live document that all invited users are able to make edits to in real time. This can be useful when documents need to be passed and forth among individuals who don’t necessarily work together. This means there will only be one central document as opposed to having multiple back and forth attachments that can lead to work duplication and confusion.
How do you filter out your own users and IP from the analytics information?
By default, Google Analytics tracks ALL visits, including those by your employees. Excluding your internal traffic from your reports will enable you to focus only on the data from your customers and prospects.
Setting up profiles will help you weed out internal traffic. Having multiple profiles can enable to you to see data that excludes certain IP addresses (IE your employees) and all data as well.
You can create a new profile by:
- Click on Admin at the top right of your standard reporting page
- Click + New Profile.
- Enter the profile name (I would name it Master Profile), and select the Reporting Time Zone.
- Click Create Profile.
- Select that new profile from the Profile menu.
Now to set the filter:
- Select the filter tab.
- Click +New Filter
- Name the filter and make sure filter type is set to exlude, traffic from IP addresses, that are equal to.
- Enter the IP address that you want to exclude
TIP: In order to find out the users IP address that you want to exlude, simply have them go to whatismyip.com.
- Using this method, you need to do each IP individually.
- If you need to filter more than just a few IP addresses, there is a fairly easy method to filter a range of IP addresses at once.
- I found a good site here that shows you how to do this: http://yoyoseo.com/analytics/profiles-ip-filters/ - direction are under “Exlude Dynamic IPs”
Where do we get a deeper training on Google Analytics?
One of the future workshops we are hosting will be on the specifics of how to use Google Analytics. This includes understanding all of the features, as well as how to analyze the data and derive meaning.
This will be hosted either by a Google employee or someone who is certified in Analytics. If you are on our mailing list, you will be automatically notified when we have a date set.
Otherwise, here is a great tutorial video for beginners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm78xlsADgc
A good tutorial in writing from Google: http://support.google.com/analytics/?hl=en
Tech Corps is also offering a Plan IT! tech assessment of current 501(c)(3)’s in Seattle that our focused on fighting poverty. This means that as part of this assessment, we can assign a skills based volunteer that can help train your personnel and implement the program.
Is form feedback available anonymously?
“--Form feedback is timestamped for when the response was submitted, but unless you require an answer in a “Name” field, responses are anonymous.”
Google Forms allows the creator to formulate any question they want on their form, and then either share it with specific individuals or make it public. By default, no users name is ever given, unless one of the questions is asking for it. You also do not need to be signed in to a Gmail account (or any account for that matter) in order to fill out a form if it is public.
Yes, all Google organization accounts can have one or more administrative accounts that can give or restrict access to any user. The individual involved in signing up for the domain name will be given an initial “Admin” account that will be able to grant power to other users, delete accounts, etc.
We use Google Apps for Education and are hoping to include Google Plus. Will that service be offered to our K-12 school any time soon?
After doing a little more digging into this issue, it has become clear that this has become an issue for many k-12 schools across the country that are hoping to implement Google + into their Google apps program, for both the students and the faculty.
Unfortunately, it seems that it still is not available for and that Google is not planning on changing this up anytime soon.
We already have @our domain name, but many of our employees link our personal and work accounts and then select “from” to indicate whether we are sending email from our personal or work accounts. Will we still be able to access Google apps for nonprofits in this case?
This depends on a few things. Is the domain name you have registered as a Google account? If it is already a Google apps account that is simply using your domain name, all you have to do is upgrade the account to a Google Apps for Nonprofits account. Nothing changes, except your eligibility to enroll for products. Having another personal account linked with your work account should not affect this.
Your @domain name, however, does need to be a Google apps account initially in order to apply for the Google Apps for Nonprofits program.
For more information: check http://support.google.com/nonprofits/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=1672548&parent=1645022&ctx=topic
Google Analytics vs. webmaster tools? Use both? How to choose?
Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools are two programs that are not at odds with one another.
- Analytics, as was discussed is a way of analyzing traffic information on your website in order to make decisions on your website and how users will interact with it.
- Webmaster Tools, is a reporting tool that gives you information on how the Google search engine is indexing your website.
This gives you information on how easy it is for someone to find your site when they have entered a relative search query that is relating to your service. Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools are two programs that complement each other, as they are both a way of increasing the visibility of your website and creating traffic. Lastly, there is a Webmasters Tools section in Google Analytics, so the two programs can actually be integrated into one program. http://support.google.com/nonprofits/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=1672548&parent=1645022&ctx=topic
Really, do we all know? How big IS the internet?
“→ it’s HUGE!” About this big http://internet-map.net/
I know that my organization has used Google Analytics before, but when I go to GA from my (google-domain) work email account right now to test it out, it says I still need to set it up. Am I missing something?
There are many different reasons as to why you might still need to set it up. However, the most common reason is that analytics is not installed on your site yet. It is one thing to have an account that is the same email address, but there is one more step involved in getting the service connected to your actual website.Analytics can be installed on any site domain, regardless of whether it is a Google run site or not.Here is a great tutorial that concisely explains how the installation process workshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_l4oc6tbYk
Once you get Analytics installed and connected, the program should start retrieving data from your website.
If we have a Google for Nonprofits account set up already, how do we know that we’re eligible/getting that $10k in advertising?
Once you are approved for Google for Nonprofits, the $10,000/month is available as a product that you enroll in. The name of the program is Google Grants/Adwords. Although it depends on the income of your organization, most 501(c)(3)s are eligible for this benefit.
*One of the future workshops we are hosting will be on the specifics of how to use AdWords and make the best use of the 10,000$. This will be hosted either by a Google employee or someone who is certified in Google Apps. If you are on our mailing list, you will be automatically notified when we have a date set.
How do we report receipt of Google Adwords donation to IRS? Is it an in-kind contribution or grant?
It is an in-kind contribution for eligible 501(c)(3)’s. It must be reported on Form 990, the tax form for organizations. Google can provide support with this, as well.
More information here: http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Other-Non-Profits
Google AdWords: Can we target users by geographical location? For example, can Google users in Kirkland get a different ad than Google users in Renton?
Absolutely! This is known as GeoTargeting, which is an available option within Adwords. Here is a video demonstrating this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oWHmRK2OcwOne of the great things about this program is the ability to specify your audience in many different ways. Support for this is also available via Google Customer support. They can help you design your campaign (including GeoTargeting) in order to best spread your message.
*One of the future workshops we are hosting will be on the specifics of how to use AdWords and make the best use of the 10,000$. This will be hosted either by a Google employee or someone who is certified in Google Apps. If you are on our mailing list, you will be automatically notified when we have a date set.
If we already have a Youtube account for our organization, is there a way to transition that channel to be a Youtube for Nonprofit channel?
Yes. Because Youtube accounts are now Google accounts, once you are approved for the Youtube for nonprofits, you should be able to upgrade the account so that it is customizable to how you want it.
More information here :http://www.youtube.com/nonprofits
If we use Google forms for a survey how does the data get aggregated and what does that look like. Are there options for how to parse the data, for example looking at all responses from people in a specific age range.
The data gets aggregated in a similar fashion to Microsoft Excel, as a spreadsheet.
We have a Google domain for our nonprofit but were not able to set up a Google Earth Outreach account using that domain, we needed to create a gmail account to do it. Can you show us how to create an outreach account that’s not through a personal gmail account?
Is the Google domain upgraded to Google Apps for Nonprofits? Once it is, you should be able apply for Google Earth Outreach as a result. More information here: http://www.google.com/earth/outreach/index.html