E&I Members: Make Your Voice Heard in Less Than a Minute! Help us improve your experience-fast, simple, and meaningful.
Education funding often comes with strict compliance requirements, especially when federal grants and funding are involved. Procurement teams must manage this complexity while ensuring compliance with federal, state, and institutional regulations, securing competitive pricing, and documenting every step of the sourcing process. It’s a lot of work, and it must be done correctly.
Cooperative purchasing organizations have become a powerful ally to help institutions meet these standards, including cooperative agreements for US Department of Education compliance.
Cooperative agreements can save you time and money, but they must remain compliant with federal competitive procurement standards.
Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR) and Uniform Guidance at 2 CFR 200 govern how educational institutions procure goods and services using federal grant funds. These regulations define core procurement principles that institutions must follow, including:
EDGAR and Uniform Guidance under 2 CFR 200 confirm that educational institutions can use cooperative purchasing agreements, as long as they meet federal competition and procurement rules.
Cooperative purchasing agreements help institutions maintain an audit-ready posture with a transparent, competitive, and documented procurement process.
E&I Cooperative Services conducts competitive solicitations using transparent methods that meet federal expectations, maintaining full solicitation of files, evaluation documents, award justifications, and pricing analyses. This reduces the administrative burden for procurement teams and provides the backup needed in case of audits or if questions arise from funding sources.
The standardized pricing found in cooperative agreements meets the cost reasonableness standards and reduces the need for sole-source justifications. While institutions have options with contract frameworks, E&I solicits contracts on behalf of its members specifically to comply with federal requirements.
Cooperative purchasing agreements produce a consistent documentation trail across departments. This improves audit visibility and reduces manual tracking, making it easier for institutions to demonstrate compliance.
Besides meeting federal compliance requirements, cooperative contracts also help lower your costs and streamline the entire procurement process. Here are some of the key benefits.
Consolidated spending models reduce the total cost of ownership across product and service categories. You benefit from larger volume discounts by leveraging the buying power of multiple members and also reduce many indirect costs, like lengthy bidding and negotiating processes.
Cooperative contracts are vetted and ready to use. This allows you to reduce the number of RFPs you need to manage and accelerates purchasing. At the same time, you can rest assured these agreements meet federal regulations, even for urgent purchasing needs.
You also benefit in two key ways:
Both of these can reduce your risk while keeping service levels and accountability high.
Cooperative purchasing also reinforces cooperation in education by allowing everyone to benefit from shared purchasing power. Broad utilization of cooperative contracts also helps centralize sourcing and reduce maverick spending, which may fail to comply with federal guidelines.
When evaluating any contract, there are a few key areas you will want to focus on, such as:
While the cooperative will provide support for compliance, the responsibility to ensure compliance is still yours. So, you will want to have a formal review from your compliance team and legal staff before committing.
E&I’s contracts are competitively solicited following widely recognized procurement standards that support EDGAR and 2 CFR 200 requirements and align with National Institute of Governmental Purchasing (NIGP) principles. E&I’s cooperative are designed specifically for educational institutions.
E&I Cooperative Services is the only member-owned nonprofit sourcing cooperative that focuses exclusively on the education sector. We offer federally compliant cooperative purchasing agreements to help you optimize your procurement process. Learn about all of the benefits of E&I membership.