I want to evaluate volunteer satisfaction for 6 different departments (identical survey questions for all departments), with reports for each one, and one combined report for the organization as a whole.

I've created one survey, and used the first question to ask for which department they are filling it out. Can I use this to generate separate reports for each department's results, as well as combining all departments into one report for the whole organization? Or do I have to create a separate survey for each department, generate a report from each one, then manually combine all results into a whole?

Limesurvey is a survey tool, thus made for data collection, not data analysis. The statistics tool is rather basic and it does not allow cross tabulation. Usually analysis of results is done in a specialized tool for this, e.g. SPSS/PSPP, or even Excel/Calc.

I see. As a workaround, what if I used the answer to the first question as a placeholder in all the other questions? Would this work?

E.g. If first question is, "Which of the departments that you volunteer in are you completing this survey for?" and respondent chooses "Department A," then "Department A" becomes a placeholder appending each of the questions that follow.

In other words, all subsequent questions then end with "_________ in Department A?"

So far, I know this part can be done, but what I wonder is if the impact on reporting in the statistics tool - would it show separate statistics for each question for Department A, Department B, Department C, etc.?

No, tailoring the question text will not have an effect on the reporting. It is still the same question, you just change some text dynamically.

You would have to create separate questions for each department, which then would not allow you to get a total result for all departments.

What you can do in Limesurvey reporting is to filter results based on a certain question. But to get to the 6 reports you want, you would to have to filter for each department to get separate results.

Best way is to export results into excel and create your reports there for each department.