Microsoft Ad Grants for Nonprofits: What Happened, and What to Do Instead

Microsoft no longer offers ad grants to nonprofits. Its own help page says the Microsoft Advertising Ads for Social Impact grant program "will end effective December 2025" and that Microsoft is "no longer accepting new program applicants", as of October 2026.

That is the whole answer for most readers. If you searched "Bing ad grants" or "Microsoft ad grants for nonprofits" because an older article told you about $3,000 a month in free Bing ads, that program is gone. The rest of this guide explains what it was, what Microsoft still offers nonprofits, and the realistic options for reaching people who search on Bing.

What the program was

Ads for Social Impact was a pilot run by Microsoft Advertising, the platform that sells ads on Bing and other Microsoft sites. Microsoft's help page, which still describes the program even though it has ended, laid out a two-step grant (as of October 2026):

Level	Monthly grant	Condition
Starting grant	$1,000	No spend minimum
Increased grant	$3,000	Spend at least $1,800 a month, including grants and coupons, for two months in a row, then keep spending at least $3,800 a month

The catch was built into the second row. To get the $3,000 level you had to spend beyond the $1,000 grant, and Microsoft's page says all spend beyond the grant "is automatically applied to the account's payment method." In plain arithmetic: to reach $1,800 of spend with a $1,000 grant, $800 came from your own card. To hold the $3,000 grant, you had to spend $3,800, so the same $800 a month kept coming from you. It was a strong offer for organizations with an ad budget, and a $1,000-a-month offer for those without one.

Eligibility, per the same page, required valid charity status (501(c)(3) in the US), Microsoft-approved nonprofit status, an Expert mode account, a website about your mission, and one account per organization. Government organizations, hospitals and medical groups, schools, childcare centers and academic institutions were excluded.

When and how it ended

The NonProfit Times reported in October 2025 that the last grants would be awarded on 30 November 2025 and that nonprofits would have 45 days to use them. It also reported that Microsoft emailed grantees that campaigns left running after the grant period would be charged to the payment method on file.

That last point still matters. If your organization had a grant account and nobody has looked at it since, check it now. A campaign that kept running after the grant ended has been spending real money. Sign in to Microsoft Advertising, look at recent charges under billing, and pause anything you didn't mean to pay for.

Microsoft's separate Ads for Social Impact sign-up page says "The pilot is currently paused for grants on Microsoft's advertising network" and invites nonprofits to sign up for updates on future advertising grants, as of October 2026. We read that as: no program now, and no announced date for a new one. We'd rather tell you that than guess.

What Microsoft still offers nonprofits

Microsoft's nonprofit offers page lists software discounts and grants, but no advertising offer, as of October 2026. The ones listed include:

• Microsoft 365 Business Premium at a 75% discount
• Microsoft 365 Copilot at a 15% discount
• an Azure grant of $2,000 in service credits a year
• Dynamics 365 Business Central at a 60% discount

None of those buys ads. If you are sorting out Microsoft software, our guide to the Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant that ended and the Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 comparison cover that side.

Options for reaching Bing searchers now

1. Earn the free Bing traffic first. Organic results cost nothing. Make sure your site is in Bing's index, your pages answer the questions people actually search, and each page has a clear title. This is slow, but it is the only free route left on Bing.

2. Pay for a small, tight Microsoft Advertising campaign. Microsoft Advertising is pay per click, like Google Ads. A paid campaign makes sense when a click is worth real money to you, such as event registrations or a donation page that converts. Start with a small daily budget, phrase and exact match keywords, and a conversion goal, and check it weekly. We haven't run a paid Microsoft Advertising campaign for Storyline ourselves, so we can't give you cost-per-click numbers from experience.

3. Copy what already works on Google. Microsoft documents a Google Ads import that brings campaigns from a Google Ads account into Microsoft Advertising. If you already have search campaigns with good click-through rates, importing them can save hours. Two cautions: an imported campaign spends your money, not grant money, so set the budget before you turn it on; and Ad Grants campaigns are built around Google's grant rules and bidding limits, which don't carry over. Review every campaign after import.

4. Put your effort into Google Ad Grants. If your goal was free search ads, the program that still exists is Google Ad Grants. Google's Ad Grants page offers eligible nonprofits "up to $10,000 per month in search ads shown on Google.com", as of October 2026. It is search text ads only, it has rules that can pause your account (a 5% monthly click-through rate, conversion tracking, keyword quality), and Google calls the $10,000 "a limit, not a guarantee of spend". Our guides on eligibility, requirements and applying walk through it with links to Google's pages.

Should you wait for Microsoft to bring it back?

We wouldn't plan around it. Microsoft hasn't published a date or terms for any successor, and its pages describe a paused pilot. Signing up for Microsoft's update list costs nothing, so do that if you like, then spend your time on the options above.

A note on our interest

NonProfitSaver makes the Google Ad Grants Kit ($97 once, early access; sales haven't opened yet). It is for Google Ad Grants only and does nothing for Microsoft Advertising, which is why we only mention it here. No vendor pays us to appear in our guides (how we work). For a broader look at free and discounted ad programs, including Meta, LinkedIn and YouTube, see free advertising for nonprofits.