**4.1 Step one: understanding your organization**

The key to sustainability planning in project management is understanding one's own organization and having long term vision for it. As Director/MD/CEO, management, board or staff, of an organization, everyone, as the first step towards sustainability, should be familiar with the organization and have a clear picture of where they expect to see their organization after a period of 5 or 10 years. This ability to understand and envision the future of one's organization in the long term serves to get the entire organization to think thoroughly about "what" to do and "how" to do the "what" to get the organization to become sustainable in terms of its programme of activities, impacts and resources [5, 15]. Once the long term vision is known to members, the various things required to achieve sustainability could then be easily drafted. Having attained this, and with the use of data and facts, members of the organization are then enabled to explain to the donor(s) about the long term goal(s) of their organization and the processes, resources required to ensure it becomes sustainable in the long term.
