PACON Terms of Use

1. About PACON

PACON (the Pan-African Community Organisations Network) is a PAID-ESA initiative that registers, maps and progressively verifies community-based organisations, NGOs, cooperatives and other locally rooted development actors across Africa.

By creating a PACON account, you agree to these Terms of Use on behalf of the organisation you represent. If you do not have the authority to bind that organisation, do not proceed with registration.

2. Eligibility & organisational accounts

PACON accounts belong to the organisation, not to the individual who registers it. The person completing registration becomes the account's first owner and its primary contact, and can invite colleagues afterward with their own roles (owner, admin, editor or viewer) from Team & Settings.

PACON is intended for legitimate, locally rooted organisations working directly with communities across Africa — community-based organisations, NGOs and CSOs, cooperatives, associations, faith-based organisations engaged in development or humanitarian work, and comparable actors with a genuine community-level presence and a development, humanitarian or social-impact mandate.

You are responsible for keeping your account credentials confidential and for all activity carried out through your organisation's account, including by colleagues you invite.

3. Accuracy of information

You agree to provide accurate, current information about your organisation and to update it when it materially changes — particularly your legal status, headquarters and operating locations, and the documents you submit for verification.

Editing a project or claim that a member of our team has already verified clears that verification mark; it is reinstated only after our team reviews the change.

4. Information we collect

Depending on how far you take your profile, PACON may collect:

• Identity and registration details — legal name, acronym, legal status, registration number and authority, tax ID, year founded
• Contact details — primary contact, general email and phone, website and social links
• Headquarters and every operating area you record, down to district or community level where you provide it
• Thematic areas, delivery capabilities, languages, populations served, and organisational assets and resources
• Systems and policies (e.g. safeguarding, PSEA, procurement) and your project and donor/partner history
• Supporting documents you upload — registration certificates, governing documents, financial accounts, policies, and others, including confidential ones
• Consent records — what you agreed to and when, kept even if you later withdraw a consent
• Team member accounts and roles

5. How we use your information

We use the information in your profile to review and, where appropriate, verify your organisation; to make your profile searchable and discoverable by partners once listed; to identify and match your organisation against opportunities that fit your profile; and to maintain a record of engagements and their outcomes.

We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for any purpose beyond operating and improving PACON without telling you.

6. Verification & due diligence

PACON uses a four-level verification framework: Registered, Profile Reviewed, Verified, and Proven Delivery Partner. Each level has its own requirements — a mix of profile completeness, documents on file, references, and, at the higher levels, due-diligence checks our team carries out.

Due-diligence checks, including sanctions screening, are recorded manually by our team in this version of PACON. They are not an automated or continuous screening service, and a "pass" outcome reflects the check performed at that time, not an ongoing guarantee.

Registration and verification are not certification, accreditation or endorsement by PAID-ESA. Reaching a verification level means specific, disclosed requirements for that level were met — it is not PAID-ESA vouching for your organisation's work generally.

7. Visibility of your information

While your organisation's registry status is Draft or Submitted, your profile is visible only to our staff. Once listed, the profile fields you completed — identity, locations, thematic areas, capabilities, languages, projects and your verification level — become visible to partners searching PACON.

Some records are never shown to a searching partner and stay internal to PAID-ESA regardless of your registry status: our staff's internal notes, due-diligence check outcomes, reference contact details and comments, and engagement performance reviews. Documents you mark confidential are never included in anything exported or shared externally.

8. Consent & your choices

At registration you make six separate consent decisions. Two are required to create an account: agreeing to PACON storing and processing your organisation's information, and agreeing to these Terms of Use. The other four are optional, and declining any of them does not prevent registration:

• Being contacted about relevant opportunities and partnership invitations — decline and you can still register, but you will not appear in shortlists for opportunities
• Allowing our staff to carry out verification checks on your organisation — decline and your verification level stays at "Registered"
• Allowing our staff to contact the references you provide
• Receiving occasional PACON news and updates

Every consent decision is recorded, including declined ones, and you can change any of them at any time from Team & Settings in your portal. Withdrawing a consent takes effect from that point forward; it does not undo anything already done under the earlier consent.

9. Opportunities, matching & engagements

Our staff may run searches and matching against your public profile to identify organisations for specific opportunities, and may send your organisation a direct invitation if you have consented to being contacted about opportunities. You decide whether to respond to any invitation.

If you complete an engagement facilitated through PACON, the partner involved may provide a structured performance review. Reviews are recorded internally and are never shown to you or to other partners directly — they may feed a summary indicator of your delivery track record, including whether your organisation meets the bar for Proven Delivery Partner.

10. Not a grant programme

Registration with PACON does not automatically provide or guarantee funding or grants, contracts, employment, accreditation, partnership status, prequalification, or future assignments.

Registration creates an organisational profile within the PACON network so that eligible organisations may be identified and considered when relevant opportunities arise. Any future partnership, contract, assignment or other engagement remains subject to applicable requirements, assessment, due diligence and a separate agreement.

11. Suspension, archiving & registry status

Our staff may move your organisation's registry status — for example, to Suspended if information on file needs to be corrected or a concern needs to be resolved, or to Archived. Verification level is tracked separately from registry status: suspending or archiving your listing does not remove a verification level you have already earned, and it is restored in full if your organisation is reactivated.

While suspended or archived, your organisation's profile is not editable by your team and is not visible to searching partners.

12. Data retention & deletion

You may request deletion of your organisation's PACON account at any time from Team & Settings. Where your organisation has no recorded engagements or invitations, we delete the record. Where it does, we anonymise identifying and contact information, archive the profile, and retain the engagement history itself — the same standard we apply to our own records of who we worked with.

We record both the deletion request and the action taken on it.

13. Changes to these terms

This is version v1 of these terms, in effect from 2026-08-15. If we make a material change, we will update the version here and, where practical, let registered organisations know. Continuing to use PACON after a change takes effect means you accept the updated terms; if you do not, you may request account deletion as described above.

14. Contact

Questions about these terms, or about your organisation's PACON profile, can be sent to PAID-ESA through the contact details on the PAID-ESA website.