Google distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in free advertising for years to three prominent anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ organizations, the Daily Dot found.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, and Do No Harm are all enrolled in the Google Ad Grants program, which offers a monthly $10,000 advertising stipend for qualifying charities.
However, it appears all these charities may run afoul of Google’s rules for the program.
The donations are disbursed as daily ad spends of $329, which the charities can choose to supplement with additional funds.
Using Google’s ad transparency tool, the Daily Dot identified the charities and when they began using the grant money.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has received grants since Sept. 13, 2020, adding up to potentially a half-million dollars in free advertising over the years.
The juggernaut conservative legal fund has an annual budget in the hundreds of millions and uses it to fight abortion rights, contraceptive rights, and protections for LGBTQ people nationwide. It helped overturn Roe v. Wade and won an infamous discrimination case involving a Colorado baker.
The ADF has ties to the SPLC-designated hate group American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), an organization that pushes conversion therapy for LGBTQ people and opposes abortion.
WIRED reported last year that Amazon denied ACPeds access to free advertising that it makes available for charities over its hate group designation.
The ADF also donates tens of thousands to the Child and Parental Rights Campaign, a group fighting against LGBTQ rights, coordinating between activists and lawmakers to push bathroom bills and proposals to ban drag. The CPRC sourced transphobic parents and doctors from organizations like Genspect to testify against anti-trans bills in state legislatures around the country.
The ADF’s ads supported by Google fixate on trans people, abortion, and free speech concerns. “What is gender ideology and how do we fight it?” reads one.
“Preserving women’s sports: male athletes who identify as female have won race after race, all the way up to state. Here are some of the championship titles that male athletes have taken from girls”
“Defeat Roe,” reads another. “Since 1973 over 63 million babies have been denied the right to life.”
One even calls out the SPLC, accusing it of “discriminating against people of faith.”
In the past 30 days, the ADF has run at least 120 text ads, nearly all of which are funded with Google Ad Grants.
Google doesn’t publish info about the reach and cost of individual non-political ads, nor what keywords it targets in search, as the keywords can be changed daily. Not all of the ads are shown every day, indicating some may be more successful than others.
Google does however provide information about the ADF’s political ads, which gives some context into how valuable the Ad Grants might be. Over a recent 12-month span, the ADF spent $97,400 on Google ads viewed by millions, meaning that $120,000 per year in free advertising could have a similar reach.
The Family Research Council (FRC), which took in $23 million in revenue last year, first published an ad with Google Ad Grants in August 2024. The FRC, alongside the ADF, spent millions pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation across the country. The FRC officially does not believe that “sexual orientation” should be a protected characteristic in law and that “homosexual behavior is harmful to the persons who engage in it … and society at large.”
In 2019, FRC President Tony Perkins wrote in the Daily Caller, “For years, LGBTQ activists wanted to keep the goal of luring children into sexual confusion under wraps. Now that they’ve hoodwinked a lot of the country on their agenda, these extremists no longer have to hide. In fact, they are increasingly bold—even boastful—about their real intentions of recruiting kids.”
One current ad offers a free Bible app: “Free bible video readings and daily devotional with Tony Perkins!”
The other advertises its site.
Do No Harm, a network of anti-DEI and anti-trans healthcare providers across the U.S. has been enrolled in the program since April 23, 2023, receiving up to $180,000 worth of free advertising. Its tax returns from 2022, the most recent year available, show an annual operating budget of $2.6 million.
It ran a total of 16 ads since enrolling in the program, all of which were supported with Ad Grants. Many of these ads promote the false idea that gender medicine is unevidenced and frame American children as under attack from “woke” doctors:
“Save America’s Children – Do No Harm will fight to protect children from dangerous ‘gender-affirming care,’” reads one.
Another hypes a study on “the myth of reliable research in pediatric gender medicine.”
Do No Harm offers a list of resources for parents from transphobic organizations and outright conversion therapists, including the book Detrans, Desist, & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult, which recommends that parents socially and physically isolate their kids to encourage them to give up their LGBTQ identities.
Do No Harm is a relatively new organization that has been turbocharged with funding. It maintains an anonymous tipline for doctors to complain about their hospitals offering DEI-flavored or gender-affirming care.
This month, it published a database of hospitals and clinics nationwide that provide gender care, outing hospitals under the guise of “protecting children.”
Charities that meet Google’s eligibility criteria can apply for its Ad Grant program. They must be registered charities, have a high-quality website, and follow Google’s policies on intolerance and hate speech against protected groups.
Google’s Ad Grants program specifies that ads and websites for eligible charities “should not promote opposition or anti-sentiment related to beliefs about protected groups, including … sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or other characteristics that are associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.”
The organizations’ activities could violate Google’s intolerance policies, as they all appear on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups.
The Ad Grant program helps over a million charities worldwide get more web traffic, donors, and volunteers. In 2018, LGBTQ youth charity The Trevor Project raised $66,045 and got an additional 8,000 visitors to its site using just $11,809 in free ads
Google, the ADF, FRC, and Do No Harm did not respond to requests for comment.
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