Invironmental assessment involves the history and current situation of a project or organization and aims at identifying an organization’s strengths and weaknesses as well as the (future) opportunities and threats it is facing. In order to respond to the environment in an appropriate manner one must fully understand the internal and external context in which an organization is operating. Formulating a strategic plan will help in reaching such an understanding; a strategic plan cannot be isolated from the environment but must address all kinds of issues and questions within its context. The word ‘context’ comes from the Latin word for ‘weaving together’; here, it means weaving together all information of relevance in the external and internal environment of an organization, as Bryson suggests. In carrying out an environmental assessment, an organization’s strengths and weaknesses are usually internal, past oriented, and refer to the present situation, while opportunities and threats are generally external and future oriented.

The potential result of an environmental assessment is to prepare a background report on external forces, trends, key resource controllers, and actors, including funders, clients, customers, competitors, and allies, as Bryson suggests. In addition, a report on the internal situation should be prepared, including present strategies, performance, currently available resources and future requirements (e.g., salaries, budget, staff, expertise, etc.).

Environmental assessments examine the system and financial structure of an organization as well as strategies applied to accomplish set goals, and past and present activities. It is important to clarify and categorize any available information as it makes the planning process easier.

It might be necessary to prepare various scenarios that capture the important elements of the organization; for example, based on what an organization has been doing, potential threats should be considered, such as a war. One must be aware of all the opportunities and threats the organization might face within a certain period. The discussion of various scenarios helps in identifying such opportunities and threats and might result in the formulation of specific actions to deal with them, i.e., how to build on predicted trends or take advantage of apparent opportunities. According to Bryson, "This gives an organization not only an impetus for establishing formal environmental scanning operations but also a focus on future strategies." As an outcome of the kind, for example, an organization might decide to focus on five programs that it is really good at rather than implementing ten programs, but not getting the desired results.

Another element is networking with other organizations, which is especially important among those working in the same field. Awareness of what others are doing, coordination and information sharing should be given more attention than the competition for money and clients, which often leads to isolation and inefficiency. Involvement in networks stimulates debates and will help each member organization to identify its particular strengths and weaknesses and to focus its vision and mission.

An environmental assessment basically provides an organization with vital information for its survival. Unawareness of internal and external trends and issues can lead to fatal decisions and eventually force an organization to close down. In particular, an analysis of the organization’s environment has the following benefits:

It clarifies the nature of the organization and the relationships to other organizations and their dynamics.

It provides a juxtaposition between the good and the bad, the threats and the opportunities, the weak and the strong, and puts it in context and balance.

It entails an organization exploring its outside environment and identifies the opportunities and threats, as well as key success factors.

It allows an organization to categorize important stakeholder groups, especially members, allies, potential donors, and competitors.

It identifies social, political, economic, and technological forces and trends that affect or might affect the organization in the future.

In this context is must be mentioned that trends are not necessarily good and depend to a great extent on who is setting the trend. Donors, for example, often set a trend - especially in Third World countries - by allocating huge budgets for a certain subject or issue. As a consequence, many organizations go in that particular direction simply because it means funding. In Bangladesh, for example, the donors at one point encouraged the use of chemicals in farming, and many funds went to farmers using chemical fertilizers. After ten years they came to realize that this had bad effects on the environment, and as a result, everyone changed their focus.

Identifying the trends does not mean that they must be followed. In the above example it could have led to the identification of the need to address the issue of finding suitable alternatives to chemical fertilizers. If, on the other hand, a trend is relevant to an organization’s vision and mission it can be crucial to follow it. For example, in Bosnia today, most of the money is going to the promotion of democratic values and conflict resolution. On the one hand, this is good and addresses the vision of many organizations working there; but on the other hand it does not meet the actual needs and is somewhat meaningless because it is limited to the Bosnians, and excludes the Serbs. Learning about methods of reconciliation and promoting dialogue will not help as long as only one conflict party is addressed. If the trend is to contribute to conflict resolution one should examine whether the Bosnians, who are more receptive, are the right addressees or whether it is the Serbs, who are less willing and, thus, more in need, who should be the main target group. In order to accomplish a mission the trend should be principally utilized to fit the mission, rather than adjusting the mission to the trend.

According to Bryson, internal environmental assessment leads to the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization itself, i.e., the organizational aspects that help or hinder the accomplishment of the mission. An example is the lack of financial infrastructure and a reporting system to monitor revenues etc., so that by the end of the year much more money has been spent than available or budgeted. Major categories that should be assessed in the internal assessment are:

The organization’s resources (e.g., salaries, staff etc.);

The present strategy (i.e., what is being done right now);

The performance (i.e., how is it being done);

The outcomes and accomplishments (i.e., measuring what has been done and what has been achieved by this) .

When assessing an organization’s internal environment and achievements qualitative description (the how, ways and means) should be used in addition to the quantitative analysis. For example, in Bosnia, there are many UN-funded organizations; one of these project groups consists of ten women who received $50,000. An outsider might judge that the amount of $50,000 or only ten women is not effective, but if these women eventually become leaders or succeed in having a certain law passed, then this is a valuable qualitative outcome. A big quantity does not guarantee quality, and smaller projects or target groups are often more productive and achieve the better results. The more people of different educational and socioeconomic backgrounds are involved in a project, the more difficult it is to pursue the goal directly. An organization has to assess and decide whether it wants to target 1,200 women, for example, and achieve mediocre results, perhaps with a few exceptions, or help ten women and have excellent results.

The following is the result of an exercise that the participants were assigned during the PASSIA Training Program on Strategic Planning. The task was as follows:

"You are running for election to become a member of parliament and need a campaign strategy. Draft a strategic plan on how to win, i.e., how to convince your voters to vote for you. You need to develop a vision of what the Palestinian state should look like and a mission; then identify what are the strengths and weaknesses of the current situation as well as the future opportunities and threats."

There were four groups each drafting a strategic plan for Palestine; then, they had to discuss their results in the plenum and agree on one reading, the final version of which is presented here.

Vision: A democratic, independent Palestinian state with a strong civil society with its capital in Jerusalem.

Mission: To build a Palestinian democratic state with a strong civil society through promoting democracy, strengthening society and the economy, creating a constitution and encouraging pluralism.

Strengths: The right to vote; existence of civil society; tourism.

Weaknesses: Misuse of resources; Israeli control of economy; ineffective legislation: centralized decision making; violation of human rights; Israeli restrictions; lack of strategic negotiating agenda; unstable political situation; cantonization and geographical isolation.

Opportunities: Free movement across borders; free market economy.

Threats: Absence of security; failure of peace process; unwillingness of parties to work together; bad economic situation and lack of economic independence; political changes in the region; lack of unified laws and legislation.