Account Management
Principal Controlling Officer (PCO)
What Is It?
The principal of a corporation or charity is a person who has been authorized by the governing body of that organization to act on its behalf during any legal or tax matters that may arise. In practice this means a person who can sign documents that affect the charity, and the signature is binding.
A PCO may be an officer of the charity, such as president, vice president, founder, executive director, or a member of the board that has authority to act on behalf of the charity.
A charity may have more than one controlling officer, but for purposes of your GiveDirect account, only one PCO submission is required.
Why Is This Required?
Since we process payments on your behalf, our regulators and financial partners require us to perform identity verification -- the same as with any bank account. The collection of this information is intended to promote transparency and prevent individuals from using complex company structures to hide terrorist financing, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial crimes. Identity verification requirements are now standard within the financial industry, including all payment processors.
How Do You Use This Information?
GiveDirect will submit the PCO information to our financial partners for validation purposes only. GiveDirect does not store your sensitive information.
How to submit PCO information
- To submit PCO information, go to your Account Settings area in the Control Panel.
- Click the Principal Controlling Officer menu item and complete the form.
How is information collected and displayed?
The information in the PCO page is visible only to users with an Administrator role. Other users do not see this data.
For users with an Administrator role, data will be visible when it is entered into an input field. After the form is submitted, the data is transmitted to our financial partner. GiveDirect stores the last two digits of the DOB and the last two digits of the SSN for reference.
