Care2's nonprofit online marketing blog, frogloop, recently released a dual post on social networking worthy of a read from even the most staunch social networking gurus. Both the ROI Calculator and The Long, Long Tail of Facebook Causes articles will help you determine whether marketing on social networking makes sense for you.

The first one, an ROI Calculator, will help you calculate an estimate of cost and return on investment for the recruitment and fundraising efforts of your staff in social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. It works sort of like an online mortgage calculator.

Just enter the starting assumptions like cost per hour of staff/volunteers, social network "friends" recruited per week, and the average response rate for outreach or advocacy mailings, and the tool calculates results automatically. This is a fantastic way to help you determine whether or not developing a presence on social networking sites is worth your hard earned dollars and precious time.

cross-posted on frogloop: 

Last night at the BlogHer holiday party, I had the pleasure of meeting Tantek Çelik, the Chief Technologist at Technorati. I admitted to him that I was a bit confused by the whole microformat thing.  He explained it to me and directed to me to the hCalendar Creator, hCard Creator, and hReview Creator.  I thought I'd give hCalendar a whirl (below). December 19, 2006 7pm— Building a Community of 7 Million: Lessons from Care2 for Politics, Advocacy and Fundraising. Net Tuesday DC— at Affinity Lab (2451 18th St, NW 2nd Floor) Social changemakers and technological forerunners come together at Net Tuesday events to mix, swap stories and ideas, build new relationships, and reinforce the online NetSquared community. The topic for the December Net Tuesday DC Meetup is, "Building a Community of 7 Million: Lessons from Care2 for Politics, Advocacy and Fundraising." Care2's Justin Perkins and Heather Holdridge will be leading the discussion. Justin and Heather work with nonprofits to help them leverage Care2's audience for marketing, fundraising, advocacy, political and community-building campaigns. Justin Perkins, a social entrepreneur and former state water resources administrator for a major watershed in Colorado, joined Care2 in January 2006 as a Nonprofit Services Manager. Justin supports Care2's nonprofit services team and nonprofits with marketing strategy, project implementation, social networking strategy and community growth. Among other things, Justin manages and edits the frogloop.com website and newsletter, as well as Care2's new project, movingideas.org, a site for the public to gain in depth exposure to progressive issues from the 250-plus Moving Ideas nonprofit members that support the issues. Justin's new role as Product Manager involves the development of new tools for nonprofits to benefit from Care2's audience of almost 7 million members. Heather Holdridge, who worked for six years with consulting firm CTSG, and joined Care2's DC team in 2005 as Director of Political Advocacy, a role in which she is working with a growing list of organizations that benefit from access to Care2's politically-engaged membership. Previously, Heather worked for the nonprofit group Project Vote Smart.

 This hCalendar event brought to you by the hCalendar Creator.

This Week in NetSquard News #5 is up, with quick updates about what’s happening at NetSquared, followed by interviews by Eddie Codel with Craig Newmark of Craig’s List and Tantek Celik of Technorati.

Thanks to David Collin, we have interviews with Neil Gorenflo of Care2 and Andrew Hoppin of GoodStorm, and recordings of Neil's and Andrew's presentations at the last Net Tuesday in San Francisco.

Enjoy!