A New ROI Calculator For Social Network Campaigns

Care2, which describes itself as “the largest online progressive network, bringing together socially and environmentally responsible nonprofits, businesses and its 7 million members,” has created a tool to calculate an estimate of cost and return on investment for the recruitment and fundraising efforts of staff in social networking sites (like Facebook and MySpace).

The first step asks you to determine the metrics by entering goals or results, such as:

• Staff/volunteer hours per week
• Cost per hour of staff and volunteer time
• Social network “friends” recruited per week
• Average direct donation per friend from the social network site
• Net churn rate per year for your email list

Step 2 involves calculating the resulting revenue and costs for each of the metrics; step 3 involves projecting the response rates for email advocacy and outreach to social network recruits over a four-year period by entering data such as the total number of emails opened per mailing. Step 4 projects the results of the effort.

Author Justin Perkins also suggests that, if your results are based strictly on advocacy or branding, you could limit your use of the calculator to “cost per friend” or “cost per email name” to get a comparison of the cost of recruiting people elsewhere.

[ via HC & T Update ]