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It’s not easy being in procurement these days. Budget reductions, fewer resources, and an increased demand to lower costs while prices keep rising: The pressure can be…intense. While the RFP meaning in procurement hasn’t changed over the years, institutions today are increasingly seeking more efficient ways to manage the RFP process and streamline purchasing.
In fact, many institutions are looking at what is an RFP contract, and how it fits into a broader procurement strategy altogether.
A request for proposal solicits competitive bids for goods and services. The RFP contract is what results when institutions select a supplier.
The RFP meaning in procurement is distinct from informal sourcing or direct purchasing. RFPs are most often used when price isn’t the only factor in a purchasing decision, where quality, service levels, experience, and compliance are critical, or where very specific parameters must be met.
In education, RFP contracts are most common in categories that are complex or high risk, where you need flexibility to evaluate qualitative factors alongside cost.
Educational institutions also rely on RFPs to demonstrate auditability and public accountability. Since many institutions must demonstrate compliance with state statutes, board policies, or grant requirements, RFPs provide a defensible record that you’ve done your due diligence in awarding a contract.
While your RFP creation and contracting process may vary, most institutions follow a similar process, which looks like this:
Effective RFP management starts with scope discipline. Requirements should reflect your institutional needs and include standardized evaluation criteria to reduce subjectivity and speed decision-making. Clear scoring models also strengthen defensibility.
Early involvement from legal, finance, and end users prevents late-stage revisions that can delay awards and ensures contractual terms align with operational realities.
Throughout the process, documentation is critical. You need clear records to support audits, respond to supplier challenges, and protect your institution.
The effort required to manage RFPs is often underestimated. It can take weeks or months to draft an RFP, and then you have to wait for responses. The national average for keeping an RFP open for educational institutions is 51 days, and then you’ve got more time on the back-end doing the scoring and evaluation.
That window does not include stakeholder alignment before release, internal approvals, negotiations, legal review, or post-award onboarding. When multiplied across multiple categories, the cumulative impact on procurement staff capacity can be significant.
These realities have led many institutions to reconsider how often they rely on institution-specific RFPs, turning more frequently to cooperative contracts as an alternative sourcing strategy.
In a cooperative model, the competitive RFP work is conducted upstream by the cooperative on behalf of participating institutions. Contracts are competitively solicited, evaluated, and awarded. Members can then access these cooperative contracts without having to issue their own RFP for every purchase.
This approach does not eliminate RFP rigor; it redistributes it. You remain compliant while significantly reducing the administrative burden and cycle time. Institutions typically save between 10% and 15% when adopting cooperative agreements, due to volume discounts spread across hundreds or thousands of institutions.
RFP contracts are most effective when supported by disciplined processes and used intentionally as part of a procurement process that includes cooperative contracts.
E&I Cooperative Services is the only member-owned nonprofit sourcing cooperative that focuses exclusively on the education sector, achieving significant discounts for its 6,200+ members. Every contract is competitively solicited and negotiated with the unique needs of academic institutions in mind.
Browse hundreds of available agreements at E&I Cooperative Services and see where you can start saving time and money today.