Ask a school business officer what’s changed most in the back office over the past decade, and purchasing strategy is likely to come up. Fewer institutions are running every purchase through a solo bidding process from scratch. Instead, a growing number are turning to cooperative contracts — pre-negotiated agreements that any member institution can use without starting its own competitive bid.
It’s a quiet trend, but one that’s reshaping how K-12 districts and higher ed institutions approach everything from classroom furniture to lab equipment to IT services.
What’s Driving the Shift
A few forces are pushing schools toward cooperative purchasing at the same time:
- Tighter budgets and leaner teams. Procurement offices are being asked to do more with fewer staff, and running a full RFP process for every purchase simply isn’t sustainable.
- Compliance pressure. Public institutions in particular face scrutiny over how they spend, and using competitively solicited cooperative agreements gives them a defensible, documented process.
- A wider range of available contracts. What used to be a niche option limited to a handful of commodity categories has expanded significantly. E&I Cooperative Services, a nonprofit purchasing cooperative built specifically for education, now offers members access to cooperative contracts spanning athletics, facilities and MRO, IT, classroom furniture, food service, research and scientific supplies, and more.
It’s Not Just for Big Purchases Anymore
Cooperative contracts were once associated mainly with big-ticket items — construction management, major equipment, large technology rollouts. That’s changed. Institutions are now applying the same model to smaller, recurring purchases too, from office supplies to uniforms to classroom technology, simply because the time savings add up across dozens of purchases a year, not just the occasional large one.
That shift matters for smaller districts and colleges especially. A large research university might have the staff to run its own competitive bids for niche purchases. A small K-12 district or community college often doesn’t — and that’s exactly where a ready-made cooperative contract does the most good.
A Real Example of the Trend in Action
At UNC Greensboro, a public research university with more than 20,000 students, the shift toward cooperative purchasing is now standard practice. The university currently relies on more than 15 different E&I contracts across categories, and its procurement team checks for an existing cooperative agreement before starting any new bid process.
“It’s a no-brainer for a higher ed institution to take advantage of what E&I offers,” said Michael Logan, the university’s Director of Purchasing & Contracts. “They are here to help you with a large portfolio of contracts that you begin using immediately. As a procurement professional, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
What This Means for Institutions Still on the Fence
For schools and colleges that haven’t leaned into cooperative purchasing yet, the barrier to entry has gotten lower. Most cooperative purchasing organizations don’t require an institution to overhaul its entire procurement process to get started — checking an existing contract portfolio before launching a new bid is a low-effort first step that can be layered onto whatever process is already in place.
As more institutions publicize their own time and cost savings, the trend is likely to keep gaining momentum. For procurement teams already stretched thin, that’s a hard case to ignore.
