Municipal Cooperative Purchasing

The Educational Services Commission of New Jersey, formerly the Middlesex Regional Educational Services Commission, is New Jersey’s largest Educational Services Commission and cooperative pricing system. ESCNJ develops bid specifications according to the requests of its members. ESCNJ’s goal is to save taxpayers both time and money by seeking out the best prices for members and with no fee to join, lifetime membership is very simple. Additionally, ESCNJ is a member of the Association of Educational Purchasing Agencies (AEPA), a national purchasing association which includes 26 states and brings additional buying power to ESCNJ’s members.

Hunterdon County Educational Services Commission acts as the lead agent for a cooperative comprised of hundreds of school districts, municipalities, counties, and other municipal government agencies within the State of NJ. Cooperative pricing is a purchasing system whereby the lead agency (HCESC) prepares and advertises for bids, awards a master contract to the lowest responsible bidder, provides for its own needs and extends the prices to our registered members. There is no fee to join & membership is continually growing.

COSTARS is the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s cooperative purchasing program.  The goal of this program is to encourage, expand, and facilitate the opportunities for Members to achieve procurement savings, to provide increased opportunities for Suppliers of any size to participate and compete for Members’ busines and to provide contracts with competitive pricing.

For more information: https://www.dgs.pa.gov/COSTARS/Pages/default.aspx

Being registered with Sourcewell can help you save time and money by combining the buying power of 50,000 government, education, and nonprofit organizations.

For more information: https://www.sourcewell-mn.gov/cooperative-purchasing

The Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) has been serving local governments for more than 40 years by acting as the designated purchasing agent on behalf of participating end users. 

For more information: https://www.hgacbuy.org/about

NJSTART was designed to streamline the procurement process and make it more efficient for companies that are interested in doing business with the State.

For more information:  https://www.njstart.gov/bso/