Manresa Jesuit Retreat House / Formcode / Annual Growth Review
This is Manresa's first Annual Growth Review, a program we now run for our nonprofit clients. Part one is the record: everything built and delivered since 2022, working and live. Part two is what we found when we studied how people reach Manresa today, and the systems that would turn the site from a beautiful front door into something that goes out and brings supporters in. Check anything worth a conversation and your list comes straight to us.
Everything in the signed scope is finished, the site is live, and this section is closed. The site has now carried Manresa through three years of retreats, programs, and its biggest fundraising year on record.
Everything below comes straight from Manresa's Google Search Console, the record of every time the site appears in a Google search. Three things stood out. The last one is money sitting on the table.
Times shown in Google per month Visits from Google per month
Search has changed: AI answers and heavier competition mean being shown is no longer enough. Position and presentation decide who gets the click.
Each line is a real search by people who do not know Manresa yet. Every step down the page costs visits. The Search Tune-Up and free ad grant target exactly these.
Two of every three appearances are stamps pages, seen worldwide, earning links from over 60 Wikipedia pages, and connected to nothing. That is an asset waiting to be put to work.
And then there is the grant
$10,000/mo
Free Google search advertising Manresa already qualifies for as a 501(c)(3). Unused today.
Google grants approved nonprofits up to $10,000 every month in search ads, placed on the very searches shown slipping above. The media never touches Manresa's budget, and it does not wait for rankings to recover: ads sit at the top while the organic work compounds underneath. Because the media is free, the return is built in before the first click. Managing the campaigns is the only cost, and it is a fraction of the value it unlocks.
Search visits today Added by grant-funded ads
An illustration, not a forecast, using the grant program's $2.00 per-click pricing. How much of the grant gets used depends on campaign quality, which is the part we manage.
Tick any item that sounds worth a conversation. When you are done, hit the button at the bottom and it will send us your list. We will come back with a scope and a price for those items only. This page is easy to forward if others need to weigh in.
As a 501(c)(3), Manresa qualifies for Google Ad Grants: up to $10,000 per month in free Google search advertising, $120,000 a year. It appears to be sitting unclaimed. People within driving distance search for retreats every day, and this puts Manresa at the top of those results at no media cost.
Google now shows Manresa in search results almost twice as often as a year ago, 200,000 appearances a month at the peak, yet clicks are down 14 percent. Search itself changed: AI answer boxes, heavier competition, and three years of natural growth that have spread Google's attention across thousands of pages instead of the retreat pages people actually want. Searches like “catholic retreat centers in Michigan” already show Manresa on page one; a tune-up concentrates Google on the pages that matter and moves those results from position five toward the top, where the clicks are.
Searches like “catholic retreats near me” reach Manresa at position 15, and near-me searches are decided on the Google map before anyone opens a website. A complete profile with fresh photos, regular posts, steady reviews, and direct links to register and give is how a local institution wins those.
The Jesuit stamps collection, carried over as-is from the earlier standalone site, is quietly Manresa's biggest search asset: a quarter of all site clicks, two thirds of all search appearances, and links from more than 60 Wikipedia pages. It still runs on decades-old static pages, unstyled and disconnected from the rest of the site. Rebuilt in the site's design with pathways to Ignatian Spirituality and the retreat pages, its huge audience starts feeding the mission.
The new site is now collecting interest around the clock: donation starts, volunteer signups, newsletter opt-ins, event registrations. Today, every one of those waits for a person to find time. The systems below follow up in minutes, work the lists you already have, and never take a day off. They reach only people who opted in or gave before, and they report back in gifts received, donors recovered, and staff hours saved. Nothing here was in the build scope, and nothing is required.
The site now collects interest around the clock: donations, tree and brick purchases, event registrations, publication signups. Every one lands in an inbox and waits for office hours. This agent calls and emails each person who opts in through those forms, within minutes, day or night, in Manresa's voice, thanks them, answers common questions, and hands warm conversations to your staff. Only people who opted in or gave before are ever contacted.
The centennial raised over $400,000 from named sponsors, 270 banquet guests, and tree and brick donors. That file is the warmest it will ever be right now, and files cool fast. A thank-you and stewardship sequence, followed by a respectful invitation into what comes next, turns a one-time celebration into a lasting donor base. Only people who gave or signed up are contacted.
We built recurring giving into the donation flow in March 2025. The plumbing works; almost no one is invited to use it. A named monthly program, presented as the natural way to give, with its own stewardship emails, converts one-time generosity into dependable annual revenue.
Manresa Matters and Manresa Memos are full of exactly what people search for: reflections, retreat guidance, Ignatian teaching. Published as PDF issues, search engines can barely read them and visitors rarely open them. Each issue becomes three to five web articles that rank, get read, and invite the reader to register or give.
The Annual Report lives as a PDF few donors open. A living impact page, retreatants served, programs held, the grounds cared for, answers the one question every donor asks: what does my gift do? It becomes the page appeals, thank-yous, and the giving flow all point to.
Analytics have been wired in since March 2025 and, by your own account, nobody has time to look. One page a month, in plain English: gifts and registrations received, where they came from, what the free ad grant delivered, what we changed, what is next. It is also how you hold us accountable.
If you take everything, this is the order we would run it. Foundations first so nothing leaks, the follow-up engine second, compounding work after. Whatever you select, we build the schedule around it.
Ad Grants live while everything else builds.
Search tune-up and the Google map.
Agent built, piloted, then working every form.
Content and recurring revenue that build on themselves.
Running underneath all of it.
You are not buying a bundle. We price only what you check, as a one-time figure, a monthly figure, or both.
Your selections start a conversation, not a contract. We send a scope, you decide, and it is built to be shared with your board.
Every month you see gifts received, donors recovered, and hours saved. If a system is not paying for itself, we say so.
The expensive part, the build, is behind you, and it has already carried a record fundraising year. What the site cannot do sitting still is go find the next hundred years of retreatants and supporters, or answer them at nine on a Sunday night. Those are systems, and the only reason they are not running today is that nobody has had time to own them. Check what interests you and we will take it from there.
We will come back with a scope and pricing for these items only.