The use of state government procurement systems is the best way for nonprofits to utilize hundreds of hours of staff time, not pay for it, and end up with a great result.

Government must procure everything imaginable. Your organization should as a policy utilize the government procurement lists as the basis for pricing and qualifications. You then have a base for negotiating a better price with your current or local businesses. Please note that any government vendor must offer the lowest price to the government, so if they are to offer a lower price to you, they must offer the same to the government. However, there is the chance that the configuration of what you are buying is not the same as what is being offered to the government, thereby giving your organization some room to negotiate.

One example to check out is the Massachusetts procurement system at www.comm-pass.com. Further, for those organizations in Massachusetts on the nonprofit qualifying list under the Operational Service Division, you are allowed to purchase off these contracts as well. Other organizations should use the information in the contract as a base of information to work from and to be an educated consumer.

Focus on utilizing the government procurements to provide your organization with the expertise of government staff responsible for these activities. These individuals are usually more efficient and effective at coming up with the best options.

The other great aspect of using government procurements is their evaluation component for measuring satisfaction.

So what are you waiting for, Take Advantage of the government’s efforts.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Business Plan, Human Resources, Strategic Planning, Grant Writing, Research, Public Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.