ABSTRACT
This book focuses on special events with a social mission, and it examines them in terms of their creation, implementation, evaluation, and innovations. In this chapter, we begin to look at the evaluation of mission-driven or cause-related events such as art and music festivals, galas and luncheons, and runs and walks. This chapter initiates the discussion of evaluation in terms of social impacts. To date, most evaluations and assessments of special events have focused on the economic impacts, especially in terms of estimating the economic benefits for the host city or community. But a relatively new stream of literature has identified the importance of non-economic or social impacts of special events.
