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The Department of Education provides a variety of grants for schools, which go beyond financial assistance for students. These grants cover basic needs, centers of excellence, innovative programs, IT modernization, and more. There are also millions of dollars in grants available from private and nonprofit organizations to improve learning.
While grants typically have stipulations for how money is to be used, there is often broad discretion for implementation. Grants, used in conjunction with a coop agreement, can give colleges and universities a significant advantage in fulfilling grant criteria and saving time and money.
However, it’s important to understand how both approaches work—and how they can work together—to maximize your spending.
Cooperative agreements enable multiple academic institutions to collaborate with suppliers. Cooperative contracts leverage the collective demand and purchasing power of multiple colleges and universities to achieve significant cost savings.
In higher education, a coop agreement can cover just about anything you need for your campus, including goods, services, construction, maintenance, and consulting. Working with an education-focused cooperative like E&I Cooperative Services gives procurement teams and finance leaders access to hundreds of competitively solicited contracts that address the unique needs of higher education.
Grants are financial awards. They can be federal, state, or private grants that typically support specific projects or initiatives. In higher ed, grants often fund infrastructure development, academic programs, and research.
However, grants have rules about how funds are used, timelines for spending, and reporting requirements for accountability. Managing grants requires you to adhere to these rules or risk losing funding.
Grants provide funding. Coop agreements help you stretch your dollars to optimize your purchasing power. It’s a great relationship.
Many grants have specifications for procurement, including competitive bidding or using pre-approved suppliers. For example, a grant for IT infrastructure improvement may come from a specific supplier, requiring the use of their products. However, there may be options to use a cooperative agreement to apply the grants toward volume discounts.
In other cases, grants fund specific initiatives but without such restrictions. For example, a university might get a grant to upgrade its research facilities. Using a coop agreement to purchase the lab equipment supports the initiative in a cost-effective manner.
There are significant benefits to considering cooperative agreements for procurement using grant dollars, including:
Here are a few ways you can optimize your use of grants and cooperative contracts.
To maximize your leverage, you need to have a clear understanding of grant stipulations. You must ensure that procurement processes align with these rules, from selecting eligible suppliers to documenting expenditures properly.
Cooperative agreements simplify this process by providing competitively solicited supplier contracts that meet compliance standards. Procurement teams can focus on aligning purchases with institutional goals rather than navigating complex bidding requirements.
Collaborating with a cooperative purchasing organization like E&I Cooperative Services gives you access to a network of leading suppliers. These partnerships ensure that suppliers can meet grant requirements and provide high-quality products and services tailored to higher education needs.
Coop agreements generally run for multiple years, helping build stronger relationships with suppliers who understand grant-funded projects.
Coop agreements reduce the administrative overhead associated with grant-funded procurement. Instead of issuing multiple requests for proposals (RFPs), you can leverage existing agreements to expedite purchases. This streamlined approach allows procurement teams to focus on strategic planning rather than managing time-consuming processes.
Both grants and cooperative agreements require transparency and accountability. Using cooperative agreements that align with grant rules reduces the risk of errors, ensuring that all funding is utilized effectively and appropriately.
With today’s budgetary challenges, rising costs, and an increasing number of initiatives, procurement, and finance teams have to guard every dollar carefully and ensure compliance with internal and external requirements.
By leveraging the funding you get through grants and the power of coop agreements, you can make sure you are maximizing your spending and meeting your goals. At the same time, you can streamline your procurement and reduce administrative overhead.
Get in touch with the procurement experts at E&I Cooperative Services to see how you can save time and money with cooperative agreements. E&I is the only member-owned nonprofit focused exclusively on the education sector.
