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Many procurement teams continue to rely on traditional, isolated purchasing practices even as the demands placed on academic institutions grow more complex. Fragmented and decentralized procurement can produce:
When you consider that, on average, more than half of all purchasing in education is still done outside any coordinated system, you can see how expensive this can be. With cost control top-of-mind for procurement leaders, this represents a significant opportunity to find savings.
Educational cooperatives can help resolve these challenges, offering shared-service models that centralize purchasing power and streamline operations.
Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) is one model that is available to certain districts, providing shared services and support. This can help streamline back-office functions, although the narrow geographic and category focus may not work for broader procurement needs.
This guide explores how cooperative educational services function, how the Board of Cooperative Educational Services model works, its strengths and limitations, and why many institutions also rely on national cooperative purchasing organizations for broader strategic value.
Educational cooperatives help institutions operate more efficiently by pooling resources, consolidating procurement activities, and improving pricing. Utilizing cooperative agreements dramatically reduces the administrative effort for sourcing, vetting, and negotiating while tapping into bulk buying power to achieve greater volume discounts.
An educational cooperative definition can take many forms, such as a regional group, a statewide network, or a national cooperative. Some cover education as part of their portfolio, which may also include government and public entities. Others are broad group purchasing organizations (GPOs) that act as educational and institutional cooperatives, available to any business. Many of these are for-profit enterprises. E&I Cooperative Services is the only national nonprofit sourcing cooperative that is member-owned and focuses exclusively on the education sector.
Procurement in education typically worked in isolation. Each district or campus negotiated its own contracts, conducted its own solicitations, and maintained its own vendor relationships. This approach offers maximum autonomy, but it also increases operational complexity and significantly limits leverage for negotiating better pricing.
One university buying a thousand laptops may get a price break, but the discount for buying tens of thousands of laptops across thousands of academic institutions can generate even more significant savings.
Cooperative educational services solve problems such as:
By reducing duplicated effort, cooperative educational services help institutions improve purchasing, align departments, and gain access to competitively solicited contracts without the time-consuming RFP process.
Whether you’re looking at area cooperative educational services or national sourcing cooperatives, it’s helpful to understand the differences and nuances, especially if you’re asking. “What is an education cooperative?” So, let’s go a bit deeper into the education cooperative definition.
Area cooperative educational services are local shared-service groups, often formed by small or mid-sized districts or institutions in the same geographic region. These groups may conduct joint bids, pool spend for certain categories, or manage administrative services together.
Often, these groups focus on shared services, such as deploying an HR or accounting function jointly across the group to streamline processing. In this case, the biggest benefit comes from everyone choosing the same system and sharing resources to reduce overall costs. This can produce savings and create efficiencies for local groups, but the solution may not be best for every participant. Choices and autonomy are limited.
Because there are also geographic limitations, local educational and institutional cooperatives generally do not offer the broad category coverage or supplier diversity found in national cooperatives.
Some states authorize cooperative purchasing programs designed to support public agencies and educational institutions. These programs may provide statewide contracts, centralized RFPs, or coordinated service offerings.
While helpful, these statewide options may still limit flexibility because they cannot meet every category need or scale across diverse institutions.
National cooperatives provide the broadest reach and biggest potential for cost savings. By leveraging demand across hundreds or thousands of institutions nationwide, you can achieve significant volume discounts on a broader range of suppliers.
For example, E&I Cooperative Services offers more than 200 cooperative agreements with top-tier suppliers. In most categories, you have multiple suppliers to choose from, allowing you to find the best fit for your institution.
There are also no geographic limitations. Regardless of your size or location, you benefit from aggregated buying power and broad reach.
The Boards of Cooperative Educational Services model operates in designated areas in New York and Colorado. It is a shared-service framework designed to help districts coordinate administrative, instructional, and procurement-related activities.
Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCUS) are created through state legislation, where they operate to establish a formal structure for multi-district collaboration. The legislation allows districts to pool resources, consolidate administrative tasks, and jointly procure goods and services. The BOCES model has since evolved to cover a wide range of shared services, though participation remains tied to geographic boundaries as these boards only exist in certain states and only serve certain areas within these states.
For example, the Capital Regional BOCES serves about 150 school districts in the Albany, Schoharie, Schenectady, and Southern Saratoga counties of New York state. The main focus is K–12. While BOCES also provides support for vocational training, it does not serve colleges or universities. BOCES Colorado brings together 21 localized boards of cooperative educational services covering most of the state to support about 150 school districts along with some colleges and universities.
BOCES supports procurement by coordinating joint bids, developing solicitations, and maintaining region-specific contracts. Procurement support may include:
While these cooperative educational services can be effective within their local boundaries, category coverage, pricing advantages, and supplier participation vary significantly.
The BOCES model has distinct advantages compared to managing procurement on a school-by-school basis, but there are limitations.
Aspect | BOCES Procurement | Independent Procurement |
Geographic Reach | Limited to certain regions | No geographic restrictions |
Contract Availability | Regional solicitations with limited supplier pools | Dependent on district capacity and RFP cycles |
Pricing Leverage | Based on pooled participation within service areas | Based on single-district spend |
Administrative Burden | Reduced due to shared solicitations | Higher due to independent bidding and evaluation |
Compliance Support | Shared documentation and recordkeeping | District must maintain all documentation independently |
Flexibility | Restricted to awarded suppliers | Full flexibility but more work required |
As you can see, BOCES simplifies procurement for some districts, but the model is not always a complete solution.
BOCES serves only New York and Colorado, although there are similar types of organizations in other states. Institutions outside these areas cannot participate, and this limits the reach of support each unit can provide.
Because each BOCES region handles its own solicitations, contract availability can also vary widely. Not all regions maintain strong portfolios, while others may have limited category coverage or vendor participation.
Districts that operate across multiple counties, maintain specialized category needs, or require consistent contracts across locations may outgrow the BOCES model. Higher education institutions may not be able to participate or find the model unsuitable because it is tailored primarily to K–12 needs.
National cooperative organizations offer benefits that complement or extend beyond the reach of cooperative educational services like BOCES. Of course, the biggest benefit is the money you can save. For example, E&I Cooperative Services combines the buying power of more than 6,000 institutions to achieve significant volume discounts, often producing savings of 10% to 15%. Many cooperative contracts also include additional rebates or incentives with terms tailored to the needs of academic institutions.
Partnering with a national cooperative also increases your agility and efficiency, which has become increasingly important as budgets shift. In fact, nearly a quarter of higher education procurement leaders surveyed ranked agility and resilience above cost reduction. National cooperatives give you the tools you need to achieve these goals.
You get broad coverage from top-tier suppliers across nearly every category of goods and services. In most cases, you have multiple options within these categories, allowing you to choose among cooperative agreements that fit your needs best.
E&I Cooperative Services has more than 200 available contracts across a broad range of categories, including:
Athletics | Professional Services |
Food and Food Services | Financial Services |
Office and Classrooms | Logistics and Travel |
Facilities and MRO | Research and Scientific |
Information Technology (IT) |
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For vendors, a national cooperative that includes thousands of institutions represents a big opportunity. This creates more competition among potential suppliers to offer significant discounts. In many cases, you may find cooperative agreements with the same vendors you’re already using, so switching to a cooperative contract may lower your costs without making a switch to a different supplier.
Multi-campus districts, higher education systems, and institutions spread across regions cannot rely solely on boards of cooperative educational services. National cooperatives provide consistency in pricing, contract terms, and supplier support across all locations.
National cooperatives maintain solicitation files, pricing documentation, and detailed audit support packages. This reduces administrative effort, especially for institutions with complex funding requirements.
E&I Cooperative Services is a national member-owned nonprofit cooperative built exclusively for educational institutions. Here are some of the advantages you get when you become an E&I member.
E&I offers hundreds of competitively solicited contracts covering major spend categories for both K–12 and higher education. This provides far greater breadth than any single board of cooperative educational services can offer.
As an educational and institutional cooperative, E&I is structured around the operational, financial, and compliance needs of schools, colleges, and universities. This aligns contracts and services with the education cooperative definition most relevant to academic institutions.
E&I assigns dedicated experts to help institutions interpret cooperative contracts, evaluate suppliers, and align procurement strategies with institutional goals. This level of support is typically unavailable from smaller or regional cooperative educational services.
E&I’s Strategic Spend Assessment (SSA) provides a detailed analysis of institutional spend to identify hidden savings opportunities, at no cost. This includes:
Membership is free, and there are no minimum purchasing requirements. As the only member-owned and nonprofit educational cooperative, E&I also offers patronage refunds. Based on the amounts you purchase annually, you may be eligible to get a refund on top of any rebates or incentives you receive directly from suppliers.
E&I Cooperative Services is uniquely positioned to support education procurement through an education-only, nationally focused cooperative model. A comprehensive contract portfolio, expert guidance, and a network of procurement professionals who share best practices can help you achieve the cost savings and efficiency you need to meet today’s complex procurement demands.
If you’re not already a member of E&I Cooperative Services, register today. If you are a member, make sure you know all of the benefits you get or connect with your dedicated E&I rep to discuss your procurement needs.