E&I Members: Make Your Voice Heard in Less Than a Minute! Help us improve your experience-fast, simple, and meaningful.
It’s a fact of life in today’s higher education environment. Procurement teams are under constant pressure to do more with less, stretch budgets, and control costs, which has made sourcing decisions more complex.
As such, colleges and universities are re-examining how they manage procurement and increasingly turning to group purchasing organizations. However, procurement teams must have a clear understanding of what is a GPO contract and how GPO agreements work, so they can make optimal decisions.
A GPO contract is a competitively solicited agreement negotiated by a group purchasing organization on behalf of multiple institutions. Instead of each college or university running its own sourcing event for the same goods or services, the GPO aggregates demand across participating members to negotiate pricing, terms, and conditions with suppliers.
This aggregation creates scale that individual institutions may not be able to achieve on their own. As a result, suppliers can offer more favorable pricing and standardized terms, while institutions benefit from reduced sourcing effort and built-in compliance.
“By aggregating demand across multiple entities, CPOs (cooperative purchasing organizations) negotiate contracts that provide significant cost savings and operational efficiencies.” — Exelon Magazine.
In higher education, GPO contracts are commonly used across categories such as facilities supplies, technology, professional services, furniture, and laboratory equipment.
While the specifics can vary, most GPO agreements follow a similar lifecycle.
First, the GPO identifies a category where multiple institutions share needs. The organization then conducts a competitive solicitation, evaluating suppliers based on pricing, service capabilities, financial stability, and compliance requirements relevant to educational institutions.
Once contracts are awarded, participating colleges and universities can access the agreement without running their own RFP. Institutions retain the ability to choose whether to use the contract and how extensively to participate. For GPO members, there is no obligation to purchase, but the contract is available as a ready-to-use sourcing option, allowing you to move quickly without sacrificing transparency or compliance.
GPO agreements and traditional RFPs are sometimes seen as competing, but they typically serve different purposes. Traditional RFPs are institution-led and customized to specific needs, but they require significant internal resources and time. GPO contracts, by contrast, centralize the competitive process and distribute the benefits across many institutions.
Here’s how they differ.
Factor | GPO Contract | Traditional RFP |
Sourcing effort | Managed by the GPO | Managed internally by the institution |
Time to contract | Shortened, contract is pre-negotiated | Often months from planning to award |
Pricing leverage | Based on aggregated multi-institution spend | Limited to a single institution’s volume |
Compliance | Built into the GPO’s solicitation process | Institution is responsible for full compliance |
Flexibility | Optional participation, no purchase obligation | Fully customized to institution needs |
Administrative burden | Reduced for procurement staff | High internal workload |
GPO contracts offer several advantages that align with the realities of today’s higher education procurement.
One of the most immediate benefits is cost savings. Aggregated demand allows suppliers to offer pricing that may not be available through standalone contracts. While savings vary by category, the ability to leverage collective buying power is a core driver of value.
Utilizing pre-solicited contracts means you spend less time on competitive sourcing, drafting RFPs, answering questions, evaluating bids, and managing contract awards. This efficiency is especially valuable for institutions without significant resources dedicated to procurement.
Competitive solicitation, documented evaluations, and standardized terms are typically built into each GPO agreement, reducing risk and making audit readiness easier.
Smaller colleges and universities get access to contracts and suppliers that might otherwise be out of reach. Even for larger institutions, a sourcing cooperative often provides access to top-tier suppliers that may not respond to individual RFPs.
E&I Cooperative Services is unique among purchasing cooperatives. It is the only member-owned nonprofit sourcing cooperative focused exclusively on education. With more than 6,200 member institutions and billions in annual purchasing volume, E&I is designed to meet the needs of colleges, universities, and K–12 organizations.
Because E&I Cooperative Services exists solely to serve education, its contracts, services, and support model reflect the realities of academic procurement, from compliance requirements to operational complexity.
Learn more about how E&I Cooperative Services has served its members for more than 90 years and can help you succeed in the future.