Measurement of social media’s value continues to be a hot issue, and now another group has taken a stab at developing a calculation to make that assessment. In this case, it’s “a tool to calculate an estimate of cost and return on investment for the recruitment and fundraising efforts of your staff in social networking sites like FAcebook and Myspace.” The calculator comes from Care2, which describes itself (in its press release boilerplate) as “the largest online progressive network, bringing together socially and environmentally responsible nonprofits, businesses and its 7 million members.”

The calculator is posted to Care2’s Frogloop blog and is focused on not-for-profit campaigns, but a lot of thought went into the calculator that communicators in the for-profit world can easily adapt.

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

A total of 15 metrics are listed. 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. It’s a detailed calculator with some serious math involved. 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.

Take a look; how might it apply to any organization’s efforts to quantify the impact of a social media outreach effort?