Ad Grants is operational, not project work. An account in good standing needs steady monthly attention; an account that goes a month without attention starts to drift. Here’s the monthly routine we run for the YMCAs we manage.

Compliance check (5 minutes)

• CTR over 5% for the trailing month. If it dipped below, identify which ad groups are dragging and either fix the copy or pause underperformers. Two consecutive months below 5% triggers suspension.
• At least one tracked conversion in the trailing 30 days. Confirm the conversion is firing — don’t trust the dashboard, run an actual test.
• No policy warnings on keywords, ads, or landing pages.

Search-term review (15–20 minutes)

Look at what people actually searched for that triggered your ads. For each ad group:

• Add high-intent terms as new keywords or exact-match variants.
• Add irrelevant terms as negatives. Generic terms like “free” or “videos” leak budget on Ad Grants.
• Pause keywords with zero impressions over a 90-day window — they’re either too narrow or failing quality-score thresholds.

Ad copy refresh (10 minutes)

• Rotate underperforming responsive search ad assets.
• Update any ad groups tied to seasonal programs (summer camp, school-year sports, winter swim) so they match what’s actually open for registration this month.
• Check headlines for stale year references (“Summer 2024 Day Camp” still running in June 2025 is more common than you’d think).

Landing-page health (10 minutes)

For each landing page your ads point at:

• Loads in under 3 seconds on a midrange mobile device. (Run a fresh PageSpeed Insights check; Ad Grants notices.)
• Has the program details, pricing if public, and a primary action (register, contact, schedule a tour).
• Is reachable via your site nav — Ad Grants policy flags orphan pages.

Bid and budget pass (5 minutes)

• For accounts on Maximize Conversions bidding (the right default for most YMCAs), confirm the conversion data is still feeding the optimizer.
• Check daily budget pacing. Most Ad Grants accounts won’t actually hit $329/day, but if you’re consistently under it on a campaign that’s performing, you have headroom to scale keywords.

Reporting (15–20 minutes)

A monthly report your executive director or board can read in two minutes:

• Spend (this month / trailing 3 months)
• Clicks and CTR
• Tracked conversions (broken down by type: program registration, contact form, donation, etc.)
• What changed this month
• What’s planned for next month

What this adds up to

Roughly an hour of focused work per month, done by someone who actually understands the policy and what each YMCA program looks like. Most accounts that fail aren’t failing because the work is hard — they’re failing because nobody on staff has that hour, or that domain knowledge, every month.

If you don’t have someone running this loop today, that’s the gap to close. Request a free audit and we’ll tell you what your current account looks like against this checklist.