Welcome from the President Mission and Vision History What We Do Standards Annual Reports Staff Profiles Board of Directors

What We Do

Pact's mission is to help build strong communities globally that provide people with an opportunity to earn a dignified living, raise healthy families, and participate in democratic life. Pact achieves this by strengthening the capacity of grassroots organizations, coalitions and networks and by forging linkages among government, business and the citizen sectors to achieve social, economic and environmental justice.

History of organization and financial standing

Pact began in 1971 as a membership organization for private and voluntary organizations (PVOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In 1992 Pact revised its bylaws, dissolved its membership, and established itself as an independent international nonprofit corporation. It is registered in Washington, D.C. as a 501(c)(3) organization and currently operates 18 field offices in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Pact's program vision

Pact is a leading facilitator of leadership and organizational development for both nascent and established NGOs, networks and intermediary organizations as well as local and national governments and businesses. Through training, technical assistance, mentoring and direct financial support, Pact strengthens organizational and institutional capacity to further development goals. At the same time Pact encourages the establishment of permanent ties to grassroots communities and cooperative but equal relationships among donors, government and business. Typically Pact programs promote innovative, locally defined development approaches, increase the effectiveness of NGOs in implementing such schemes, mobilize financial and technical resources that increase grassroots influence on public opinion, and empower local leaders to emerge and gain recognition as valid participants in public life. At the heart of Pact's organizational development approach is the concept of teamwork, a natural extension of two guiding principles that characterize all Pact programs-participation and partnership. Pact's local partners share in Pact's values and demonstrate a strong commitment to development goals as well as a capacity to grow organizationally.

Organizational and institutional strengthening

Capacity building
Through cost-effective investments Pact helps local organizations, government and businesses learn the skills of basic operational competence how to craft a budget and account for funds, supervise staff and administer an office, strengthen boards and design, execute and evaluate action plans, and use information for sound decision making.

Pact structures training programs, technical assistance and mentoring based on organizational capacity needs assessment findings that take local organizations to new levels of managerial and financial competence. Training of trainers is an integral and enduring component of our strategy and building the local human resource base our result. Pact also helps expand the financial resources of organizations by channeling funds from donor organizations, designing subgrant mechanisms, developing new funding linkages and sources of finance, and strengthening local resource mobilization capacities.

Forging networks, coalitions and strategic alliances
Pact recognizes that effective networks, coalitions and strategic alliances not only build common visions but also advance sound plans for implementing them. Pact initiatives spur organizations to augment their resources and spheres of influence and learn that working together makes them strong. By forging linkages between local, national and international NGOs and between NGOs and governmental organizations, businesses, universities, the media and donor agencies, NGOs become more visionary and strategic in addressing common issues.

As NGO sectors mature, new intermediary organizations often take root to support sectoral as well as regional NGO interests. Pact has led the way in strengthening these support groups, by transferring skills and know-how to locally managed organizations. Our experience has taught us that such organizations help pollinate best practices and provide a safe environment for innovation and risk taking. Along with strengthened NGO capacity to deliver services and effectively advocate for favorable public policy comes a deepening of the foundations of civil society.

Organizational capacity assessment
Vibrant, viable and effective organizations require ongoing self-assessment and learning to maintain their success. Pact's unique methodology for organizational capacity assessment and strengthening helps guide organizations in selecting the most appropriate activities, tools and strategies for capacity building and in anticipating and overcoming the greatest barriers to change. This comprehensive process brings together communities of peer organizations (or complex organizations with multiple departments/program offices) to reflect upon their performance and set strategies to broaden their impact and affect change. Through the assessment and planning process, organizations recognize their own potential and are able to make informed decisions for themselves about how best to address the challenges they face.

Designed to bring rigor and learning to the process of organizational capacity assessment and strengthening, OCA is a product of several years of research and field practice. Our clients include over 300 local and international NGOs, donors, governments, and corporations working in a wide variety of sectors in over 20 countries around the world.

Information and knowledge networking
As we live in an information-driven environment, individuals and organizations serving community interests are challenged to incorporate new skills and strategies to scale-up their impact in response to social challenges. In an increasingly interconnected and information-intensive environment, strategically managing information and knowledge resources is rapidly becoming as important as sound financial management to an organization's effectiveness and sustainability.

Pact uses a customized approach to enhancing organizational capacity to efficiently and effectively create, acquire and share knowledge to support learning. Our approaches can facilitate knowledge creation and learning by assisting organizations to improve the collection, processing and sharing of information and ideas.

Pact has provided technical assistance, training and mentoring to international and local NGOs around the world in:

Visioning and valuation-facilitating the development of organization-wide commitment to enhanced communications
Participatory assessment and monitoring of information and communications management capabilities, needs and opportunities
Information and communications mapping to plot information resources and flows
Communications planning to construct innovative and appropriate organizational strategies
Fostering internal and external networking
Training of information brokers and organizational network coordinators.

Corporate community engagement
Pact recognizes it takes more than public sector resources to address the world's pressing social, economic and environmental problems. At the same time businesses increasingly see planned investments in social issues are in their long-term best interest in achieving bottom-line benefits. In response to this recognition Pact is pursuing linkages with individual businesses that represent resources to support our mission and programs while meeting the needs and interests of business at the local level. In each case we and the business partner seek new ways of doing business together that contribute to sustainable development through principled best use of our comparative advantages.
Pact believes these initiatives represent a business development orientation that will ultimately result in a more diversified and sustainable institutional and economic base for Pact and its NGO partners.

Subgrant management
Pact is known for its excellence in grants management and financial operations and markets these services to a range of program managers in both PVO and donor organizations around the world. Over the last ten years Pact has managed over 5000 subgrants in its program portfolio totaling more than $100 million in USAID funds. Highly qualified staff, with extensive field experience in ensuring compliance with OMB circulars, performs subgrant monitoring and conducts financial reviews on a continuing basis.

Pact also provides USAID-funded subgrant management services to other PVOs. Advice to clients on how to improve internal controls and properly handle U.S. government grants has resulted in minimal audit findings for these clients. In addition Pact has designed approaches and implemented strategies that have led to the establishment of 12 new, independent, self-sustaining development institutions with capitalization of over $20 million.

Pact's project financial accounting system conforms to generally accepted accounting principles set forth by the American Institute of Certified Public Accounts and governmental regulations set forth by the General Accounting Office, Office of Management and Budget, and USAID. Pact's auditors in Washington, D.C. are Kearney & Company.