The role of social and organizational factors in the evaluation of volunteer programs

A variety of client-focused programs are staffed almost entirely by volunteers. It is argued here that there exist social and organizational differences between these programs and comparable staff-run programs which have important implications for the evaluation of the former. Particular attention is given to the effects of these differences on three aspects of the evaluation process: the initiation of the evaluation, the need for process evaluation, and the utilization of evaluation data.