Public colleges, universities, community colleges, and K-12 systems operate in a procurement environment where even routine purchases may need to comply with formal policies, defined purchasing authority, budget controls, and public-sector sourcing requirements. That makes the purchasing process itself as important as the products being purchased.
For academic institutions evaluating Staples government purchasing options, the goal is to establish a purchasing channel that supports compliance, accountability, and efficient access to frequently needed products. A Staples government account (Staples Business for Education) can help provide that structure when it is implemented within your broader procurement policies.
For public education institutions, Staples offers business purchasing capabilities to support institutional buyers that need account management, multiple authorized users, budget controls, and access to a broad product catalog.
Academic departments may need office supplies. IT teams may purchase technology products. Facilities teams may need Jan/San items. Administrative units may require furniture, breakroom supplies, promotional products, or print services. Through the E&I cooperative contract with Staples, educational institutions can access Staples’ full product offering across these categories.
Purchasing decisions may need to comply with state statutes, institutional policies, board requirements, competitive solicitation rules, grant and funding restrictions, and internal audit standards. Depending on the institution and transaction, procurement teams may also need to document how a supplier was selected and whether the purchase was made through an authorized contract.
These requirements are essential, but they can also create administrative workload. Routine purchases become harder to manage when departments buy independently from multiple sources. Fragmented purchasing can increase the number of suppliers procurement must oversee, make spend harder to analyze, and create more opportunities for employees to purchase outside established contracts.
A structured institutional purchasing account can help reduce some of that complexity.
Public colleges and universities rarely operate with purchasing authority concentrated in a single office. Buyers may be distributed across schools, departments, campuses, facilities teams, athletics, student services, IT, and administrative functions.
Staples Business supports unlimited account users and budget controls, giving institutions the ability to provide access to multiple authorized buyers while maintaining a more structured purchasing environment.
One advantage of a Staples government account (Staples Business for Education) is the ability to give approved buyers a consistent purchasing channel for commonly needed products. Standardization can help institutions reduce one-off purchases, encourage use of approved items, and limit unnecessary supplier fragmentation. It can also make it easier for procurement teams to establish preferred products or purchasing practices without preventing departments from selecting what they legitimately need.
Fragmented purchasing also makes it difficult to see what the institution is buying in aggregate. When more purchases flow through established supplier accounts, procurement and finance teams can gain a clearer picture of institutional spend. That visibility can support budgeting, category management, supplier negotiations, and future sourcing decisions.
It can also help teams identify purchasing patterns that might otherwise remain hidden across dozens of departments or cost centers.
For public academic institutions, one of the most important considerations is how a supplier relationship is established.
The E&I Staples agreement is competitively solicited to meet public sector procurement rules, and available to higher education and K-12 institutions. While the responsibility for validating compliance remains with the institutions, using a cooperative agreement can significantly reduce the amount of time for due diligence and sourcing as the buying cooperative handles most of this work.
Staples is often associated primarily with office supplies, but the E&I agreement covers a much broader range of categories. E&I Members can access the full Staples product catalog at discounted rates. This includes:
Staples offers more than one million products with next-day delivery coverage across 98% of the United States for most items. The E&I Staples contract also includes exclusive financial incentives and rebates and reports a Total Economic Benefit of 13.2% to 15.8%, incorporating cost reduction, cost avoidance, incentives, and revenue.
E&I Cooperative Services is the only member-owned, nonprofit cooperative that focuses solely on education, leveraging the combined purchasing power of more than 6,500 academic institutions to achieve significant volume discounts. Explore the E&I Staples cooperative contract and start saving.