Cooperative Purchasing

What is Cooperative Purchasing?

Cooperative purchasing lets multiple government buyers leverage a single competitively awarded contract instead of each running its own procurement. It takes several forms: cooperative purchasing organizations and consortia that aggregate demand across many state, local, and educational entities; piggybacking, where one agency uses another agency's existing contract; and specific federal authorities that let state, local, tribal, and territorial governments order from designated GSA Schedule offerings (for IT under the Cooperative Purchasing program, and for disaster-recovery and other defined purposes).

The appeal for buyers is reduced cost and administrative effort: the lead agency or cooperative has already competed the contract, so members can place orders quickly with pre-negotiated terms. For the contract holder, a cooperative or piggyback-eligible award multiplies the addressable buyers from one to potentially hundreds.

For vendors, understanding which of your contracts are cooperatively available — and which cooperatives or states recognize them — expands the sellable footprint of a single award. Eligibility rules differ by program and jurisdiction, so confirming whether a given buyer may lawfully use a particular cooperative or piggyback path is a necessary qualification step before relying on it.