Will Microsoft bring back its nonprofit ad grant?
Maybe, but don't plan around it: Microsoft's Ads for Social Impact page says the grant pilot is paused and invites nonprofits to sign up for updates, with no date or promise attached.
Microsoft's support team has also confirmed on its Q&A site that the program ended in December 2025 and is not taking new applications. So the honest position is that it is closed today and could come back in some form later.
What we tell clients: sign up for the update list, since it costs nothing, then make decisions as if the grant is gone. Fund Microsoft campaigns from your own budget only where they earn it. Keep the old account and its UET conversion tag in place rather than deleting everything, so if a new grant appears you restart with history instead of from zero. Meanwhile put the effort into Google Ad Grants, which is still open.
Sources: Microsoft Nonprofits: Stay updated on Ads for Social Impact, Microsoft Q&A: Is Bing Ads offering free ad credit for nonprofit organizations?
How much should a nonprofit budget for paid Microsoft Ads?
Start with the smallest budget that can produce a few conversions a month on your best terms, since Microsoft has no minimum spend and you set the daily budget.
Microsoft says there is no minimum spend or signup fee. It also explains that a daily budget is a target: it converts it to a monthly limit of the daily amount times 30.4, so some days run over and the month evens out. That makes small tests easy to run.
How we size it: take the keywords that produced donations or signups under the grant, look at their cost per click, and work out the clicks needed for a handful of conversions at your old conversion rate. If that cost is more than a new donor is worth to you, the channel fails before it starts. If it fits, run it for 60 to 90 days, compare cost per donation with your other channels, then decide. Our small-budget guide uses the same math.
Sources: Microsoft Advertising: Common questions about getting started, Microsoft Advertising: Discover your budget options
Should we switch our Microsoft Ads account to prepay?
If surprise charges are the worry, prepay is the simplest guardrail: you add funds in advance, and when they run out Microsoft pauses the account instead of billing a card.
Microsoft offers two billing modes. Postpay charges the card on file on your monthly billing date or when you hit a billing threshold, whichever comes first. Prepay deducts clicks from a balance you load, and the account pauses when the balance is gone unless you turn on auto-recharge. For a nonprofit with a finance committee, prepay turns ad spend into a known, approved amount.
The trade-off is that campaigns can go dark mid-month if the balance runs low, which hurts during a year-end giving push. Our usual setup is prepay with a balance equal to one month's approved budget, auto-recharge off, and a reminder well before funds run out. Add tight campaign budgets and you have two layers of protection. This is part of the account review in our nonprofit practice.
Sources: Microsoft Advertising: What are my billing options? Pay now or pay later
Can we import our Google Ad Grants campaigns into Microsoft Ads?
You can, with Microsoft's built-in Google import, but we only bring over selected campaigns once and never turn on automatic re-imports from a grant account.
Microsoft's import tool copies campaigns, keywords, ads and settings from Google Ads, with a quick option or a customized one. The catch is in Microsoft's own documentation: scheduled imports keep syncing from Google, and they can reactivate campaigns and reset budgets back to what they are in Google Ads. A grant account runs on Google's money at up to $329 a day. Copy that budget into Microsoft and you are paying it yourself.
Grant campaigns are also shaped by Google's program rules, such as the limits on single-word keywords, which don't apply on Microsoft. So we import only the proven themes, set them to paused, give them Microsoft-specific budgets and bids, add the UET tag, and review everything before it goes live. See how we run Microsoft Ads management.
Sources: Microsoft Advertising: Import campaigns directly from Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising: Discover your budget options (automatic budget adjustment)
How do we know if our Microsoft grant campaigns were actually worth it?
Judge them by cost per real outcome, not clicks: pull each campaign's donations, signups and registrations from the grant period and divide what those clicks would have cost by the outcomes they produced.
Grant clicks felt free, so many accounts never had working conversion tracking. Start by checking whether a UET tag and conversion goals were recording anything. If they weren't, use your donation platform or CRM to match gifts and signups by date and landing page, and treat the result as directional.
Then do the math as if you were paying. Say a campaign used the equivalent of $600 in a month and brought in four first-time donors. That's $150 per donor. If your average first gift and repeat rate make a donor worth more than that, the campaign is a candidate for a paid budget. If it produced clicks and no outcomes, it never worked; the grant just hid it. Download that history before you change anything. Our conversion tracking audit covers the tag side.
Do Microsoft ads show up in Copilot, and does that matter for nonprofits?
Yes. Microsoft says eligible ads are automatically opted in to serve in Copilot using your existing campaign assets, and advertisers can't opt out.
Ads appear in a sponsored block below Copilot's answer, chosen from the context of the whole conversation, not just the last prompt. Your negative keywords still apply. Microsoft also notes it doesn't report separate metrics for Copilot placements yet, so you won't see a clean line for that traffic.
For nonprofits this is a small upside, not a reason to restart spending. Someone asking Copilot where to volunteer this weekend or how to help after a local disaster has real intent. If you already run a lean paid account on proven terms, Copilot reach comes along with no extra setup. Microsoft lists search ads with logo extensions among the eligible formats, so add your logo and keep landing pages specific. Showing up in AI answers organically is a separate job, covered in AI search optimization.
Sources: Microsoft Advertising: About ads in Copilot, Microsoft Advertising blog: Transforming audience engagement with generative AI
