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Grant managers working on a cooperative purchasing agreement instead of an RFP for their organization

The RFP Alternative: Cooperative Purchasing

Equipping You with Buying Power 

When evaluating grant management software, it’s important to understand how your organization purchases technology. It is likely there’s a procurement process you’ll need to follow. We’ve assisted many grant managers who were navigating their internal policies and procedures, and we recognize a lot of similarities in how governments manage software purchases.  

What we have found is that a direct purchase is generally optimal. However, if your purchase cost exceeds procurement thresholds, you may be required to go through a competitive solicitation or Request for Proposal (RFP) process. This can be cumbersome and time consuming, but there are ways to satisfy competitive requirements with fewer headaches. Read on for an alternative, time-saving approach: cooperative purchasing. 

 

RFP Challenges 

An RFP process requires a lot of preparation on your part, followed by a period of waiting for responses. The evaluation of all responses can then be labor intensive and there may be multiple rounds in the process.  

Ultimately, this approach includes: 

  • Pull together a requirements list: You’ll need an exhaustive list to be sure you’re getting input on everything you ultimately need in the solution to satisfy your abundance of use cases. If you already have a desired solution in mind, you’ll want to be sure every feature and service is included in your requirements list while being careful not to scope anything broader if your hope is this is the solution that will be selected. 
  • Procurement issues solicitations: This is an official process overseen by your procurement team. They may only require that you have a minimum number of respondents, or they may open this up to all who would like to respond.  
  • Q & A period: You must answer any questions from those who are planning to respond to the RFP. Those answers must be made available publicly.  
  • Review process: Every applicant must be considered equally and fairly. This can become quite time consuming—particularly if there are a multitude of responses.  
  • Rounds of review: Depending upon the procurement policy and scope of the project you may need to wait through (and participate in) multiple rounds, which can include demos and interviews on top of the review of submitted proposals.  

 

A Better Way 

An alternative that can fulfill the competitive solicitation requirement is to leverage cooperative purchasing. Cooperative purchasing is taking advantage of existing, shared agreements that have already been procured via a competitive process.  

Government IT resellers hold state contracts that empower government entities to essentially pool their buying power. This enables agencies to procure IT solutions more efficiently than taking on a laborious RFP process. 

Cooperative purchasing was created to reap the benefits of a multi-contract approach and, when compared to the RFP process, this approach can: 

  • Reduce time to purchase 
  • Improve buying efficiency 
  • Potentially provide better terms  

Typically, at the local government level we see the Omnia, NASPO Cloud, or Sourcewell contracts being used. Those contracts can be accessed through a reseller, such as: Carahsoft Technology Corp, Insight Public Sector, or SHI. 

 

Getting Started 

It is best to engage your procurement team early in your software evaluation process. Once you understand the cost threshold that triggers the competitive process requirement, you’ll know if you need to consider the cooperative purchasing approach.  

Here are the steps we’d recommend you take: 

  • Reach out to Procurement early in your software solution evaluation process to understand their role and policies. 
  • If your cost to purchase your desired solution exceeds Procurement’s RFP threshold, approach them about the potential to leverage a cooperative purchasing agreement. They will know if this has been used in the past and, if so, which Reseller they used.  
  • If you are unsure of how to discuss this with Procurement, engage your software vendor as they should be able to help.  

Understanding your options gives you the power to choose the right path to get the results you ultimately desire. At AmpliFund, we assist grant managers with this conversation and are happy to speak directly with Procurement on behalf of, or alongside, our potential customers.  

 

 If you’d like to learn more about our experience assisting with the procurement process and about our grant management solution, please reach out 

 

*Photo by: AndreyPopov on Canva