The Power of Cooperation

By working together, schools save money. By participating in a purchasing cooperative, you avoid the repetitive and unnecessary costs of going out to bid.

Going out to bid is expensive both in hard costs and soft costs. School districts and other public agencies spend money and divert their time away from more strategic tasks when they create specifications, fine tune terms and conditions, develop a vendor pool, publish a bid, buy advertising, answer questions, hold pre-bid meetings, hold a bid opening, evaluate bids, take the recommended bid to board for award, get contract signatures, and finally issue a purchase order.

Your California-based purchasing cooperative – CalSave through the Monterey County Office of Education – has already done most of that work for you. It has awarded bids in accordance with the California Public Contract Code (PCC). And thanks to PCC authorities,  the resulting piggybackable purchasing contracts are available, not only to school districts, but to cities, counties, community colleges, special districts, non-public schools, charters schools, and a host of other types of public sector agencies.

A CalSave contract dramatically reduces your cost of acquisition and frees your time to work on more strategic problems that require your attention and talents.