The tide has turned. Co-Op is the future.
The traditional RFP isn't dead — but it isn't where public procurement is headed, either. Across all fifty states, cooperative purchasing is the fastest-growing way that agencies buy products and services. Here's what's changed, why it matters, and what it means for your next project.
One agency, one contract versus one shared contract supporting many agencies.
Every public agency in America operates under a competitive procurement requirement. For decades, the dominant method of satisfying that requirement was the Request for Proposal (RFP) or formal bid solicitation: publish the scope, advertise the notice period, receive sealed bids, run an evaluation, manage protests, and award. Each agency, each project, each time.
Cooperative purchasing uses a different architecture. One public entity — a state, a council of governments, a regional education service center, a national cooperative — runs the competitive solicitation once, on behalf of many. The resulting contract is then made available to any eligible agency in the cooperative. The competition has happened. The vetting has happened. The compliance has happened. Other agencies piggyback on the contract instead of rebuilding it from scratch.
Both methods satisfy the same underlying legal requirement. The difference is in how the work is divided — and how much time, cost, and risk is duplicated across agencies with similar needs.
How the two methods differ.
RFP / Formal Bid Solicitation
- Timeline:Average of 9 to 24 months from scope development to award; longer with protests.
- Administrative burden:Drafting, advertising, pre-bid meetings, Q&A, evaluation, scoring, protest management, council/board approval. Managed entirely by one agency.
- Competitive pool:Limited to vendors who notice the solicitation and choose to invest in a response, each with varying degrees of experience and capability.
- Pricing power:Reflects one agency's volume.
- Legal risk:Every solicitation is a new exposure surface — protests, defects in the scope, evaluation challenges.
- Reusability:None. The next project starts the clock again.
Cooperative Purchasing
- Timeline:Days to weeks. Work begins in a fraction of the time, because the procurement process is already complete.
- Administrative burden:Document the cooperative contract authority and proceed. Administrative burden is performed once, by the lead agency, on behalf of everyone.
- Competitive pool:National solicitations attract serious vendors competing for a contract that may be used by thousands of agencies.
- Pricing power:Reflects the aggregated demand of every eligible participating agency in the country.
- Legal risk:Uses a properly awarded cooperative contract which satisfies competitive bidding requirements by statute and ensures the ethical spend of public funds.
- Reusability:The contract is a durable tool. Use it for this project, the next one, and the one after that.
The benefits compound — for staff, for budget, and for the project itself.
Time back on the clock
Procurement officers spend months preparing, advertising, and evaluating an RFP. Cooperative purchasing returns that time to the agency — empowering the work that actually moves projects forward.
Better pricing
A vendor competing for a contract across thousands of agencies sharpens their pencil differently than one bidding on a single project. The buying power is aggregated; the savings are evident in the awarded rates.
Lower administrative overhead
Staff time, legal review, advertising costs, evaluation panels, protest exposure — all the hidden costs of a full RFP fall away. The lead agency absorbed them once, on behalf of everyone.
Pre-vetted, pre-qualified vendors
Cooperative contracts are awarded only to vendors that survived a competitive evaluation — financial stability, references, technical capability, pricing. Your agency inherits that diligence.
Legal compliance, expressly authorized
State procurement legislation authorizes cooperative purchasing, recognizing it as a method to satisfy competitive bidding requirements. It is not an exception or a workaround — it is a codified procurement method.
Level playing field
Public agencies without the resources to administer a national solicitation have access to the same contracts and pricing available to the largest agencies.
Faster response in urgent situations
Storm damage, critical maintenance, and unforeseen emergencies — RFP timelines don't bend. A cooperative contract allows work to begin immediately.
Transparency assured
The full competitive solicitation, scoring, award decision, and contract terms are public records. The transparency of the traditional process is not lost; it is preserved.
Public agencies across all 50 states spend roughly $1.5 trillion on procurement each year.
That figure — sometimes referred to as SLED spending (State, Local, and Education) — captures the total non-federal public procurement market across the country. It is nearly twice the size of the federal contracting market and is distributed across more than 100,000 independent purchasing entities: state agencies, counties, cities, school districts, public universities, transit authorities, water districts, and special-purpose authorities. Cooperative purchasing is a small slice of an enormous pie and the fastest-growing slice in public procurement.
The arithmetic is straightforward: with so much spend still flowing through traditional solicitations, and with cooperative purchasing offering measurable advantages on speed, price, and administrative cost, the trajectory is one direction. The wave hasn't crested. It is still building.
This is not a passing trend. It's a structural shift.
Procurement staffs are shrinking. Budgets are tightening. Project backlogs are not. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects public-sector procurement workforce growth to lag the private sector for years. Agencies are being asked to do more with less, and the traditional RFP is the most resource-intensive procurement method.
At the same time, cooperative purchasing infrastructure has matured. OMNIA Partners, Sourcewell, NASPO ValuePoint and others now operate sophisticated procurement programs covering construction, technology, goods, and services. State legislatures have codified the authority. Procurement officers' associations endorse the practice. Auditors embrace it.
Every year, the share of public dollars flowing through cooperative contracts grows. Every year, more agencies adopt it as the default first move, with traditional RFPs reserved for the cases where they truly add value. The agencies adopting cooperative purchasing today are not early adopters anymore — they are joining a clear majority of their peers who have already decided which way the wave is breaking.
Get on the wave.
LNC holds multiple awarded cooperative purchasing contracts that public agencies in all 50 states can use to procure construction, facilities management, and maintenance services. The procurement work is already done. The competition has already happened. The contracts are available for use.