Speaking of What is the Return on Investment of the Social Web for Nonprofits, TechSoup, NetSquared's "mother" org, is having a free, 2-day online event, Making An Impact: Web Stats for Nonprofits, on October 16 & 17 in the Web Building Forum.

Join Yann Toledano, Internet Marketing Consultant and host of TechSoup's Web Building Forum, and Malin Coleridge, TechSoup's Senior Web Analyst, as they explore how to use Web statistics effectively on a shoestring budget. They'll explain key Web metrics and why they matter for your nonprofit. In addition, they'll discuss how to use your statistical data to improve performance through testing and optimization.

It has become almost de rigueur these days to ponder the meaning of social media measurement and 'engagement'.

It’s one thing to have an engaged website, but more and more the action takes place in other places, in existing communities and social networks.

Charities must turn from ‘owning’ their cause to enabling networks.

Earlier this week I posted some collected thoughts on this topic: Engagement is not made to measure.  I'd welcome your comments to move the debate forward.

I've been asked to come up with ROI metrics for a grant proposal that includes a major long-haul, long-view social-web initiative, involving:

• Enterprise-wide blogging program for staff policy experts
• Enterprise-wide initiative to train staff in use of social-networking tools of various kinds -- to bring staff online in a robust way, so that we are able to carry on many more simultaneous, varied conversations, build tighter relationships with constituents, and participate broadly in the live web.
• effort to establish beachheads in external social-web communities -- in Flickr, MySpace, Upcoming.org, Digg.com, YouTube, LinkedIn, and so on. Focus would be not so much on putting institutional or campaign-related profiles in these contexts, as getting staff -- actual human beings, instead of a billboard -- participating in these communities.
• Major effort to enlist constituents as primary messengers -- give them widgets, blogs, content-distribution tools, and so on, let them know their efforts to spread the word and lend us whatever they have to give -- time, creativity, whatever -- is critical to advancing my organization's mission.

What we really want to do is create passionate users -- nurture and develop "constituent evangelists."