Google Ad Grants can get suspended. This usually happens with no warning. It can be the result of mistakes made while creating ads, or because of problems with the nonprofit's website.

You should get a notification by email, and a red bar should appear at the top of Google Ads with a message telling you the account is suspended, with a link to fix it.

What causes a Google Ad Grants suspension?

There are various policies that you have to follow, but these are the most likely ones to cause a suspension:

Website policy

Probably the most common reason for suspension. It can happen at any time, if Google spots one or more problems with your website. Check the following:

• Home page scores reliably above 50/100 when tested using the Google Page Speed Insights tool at pagespeed.web.dev. If your website fails the test, follow the report's recommendations to make improvements and test again. Do not appeal the suspension until the score's in the safe zone.
• Clear statement in the footer to tell visitors it's a nonprofit.
• No affiliate links, no AdSense, no intrusive advertising, and the focus shouldn't be mainly on e-commerce.

Mission-based campaigns policy

• No low quality score (1 or 2) keywords
• No generic or off-mission keywords
• No single word keywords (unless on exemption list)

How to get your account reactivated

Read the lesson about Ad Grant compliance and follow its instructions to fix the issue that caused your account to get suspended.

Once you have fixed the problem, you should see a link to "fix it" in the red bar at the top of Google Ads. Click to reach a form to appeal.

You can also use this form to get your account reactivated: support.google.com/grants/contact/Request_for_reactivation. Do not use that form if your account was suspended for any policy that's not related to Ad Grants.

You can safely ignore any instruction that you need two ads per ad group. If you get a response that you do need to do this, still don't do it: instead, contact me directly and I can escalate it.

A new feature in 2024: depending on which policy caused the suspension, there may be a box that you can tick to request that the Ad Grants team fix the problem for you. That's a good solution if the cause was something in the ads account, but if it's a problem with the website then Google cannot fix that for you.

Unable to make edits to your ads?

It's an Ad Grant rule that you must fix any problems before you appeal. Unfortunately in mid 2024 a new Google Ads rule came into play, that prevents suspended accounts from being edited. These two rules conflict and at the time of writing this problem has not been resolved.

To get around this problem, tick the box to allow the Ad Grants team to fix problems with the account.

Updated: August 2024