At over 50,000 members strong, the National Joint Powers Alliance (NJPA) is a municipal national contracting cooperative made up of a wide variety of government, education, and nonprofit agencies. The NJPA leverages collective purchasing power and a streamlined buying process to save money and make purchasing more efficient between member agencies and a wide variety of industry-leading vendors. Products and service solutions range from office supplies to heavy equipment – and everything in between.
NJPA solicits, evaluates, and awards contracts through a competitive solicitation process on behalf of its members – satisfying local and state solicitation requirements and avoiding duplication of the process. Thanks to the contracting reputation NJPA has earned, the organization is able to award contracts to quality vendors that members can trust.
These contract opportunities save time and money by consolidating the efforts of numerous individually prepared solicitations into a single national, cooperatively shared process – avoiding low bid, poor quality responses. This is a very efficient approach for vendors, since it allows them to respond to a single NJPA solicitation and Request for Proposal (RFP) that potentially earns thousands of sales opportunities for the business.
Contracts and service agreements from NJPA offer numerous advantages over the traditional RFP. When you submit an RFP, the proposals you receive may not match your expectations, with services that exceed your budget or simply don’t meet your requirements. The standard RFP process requires you to invest a lot of time in creating the RFP and submitting it to vendors so they can put together proposals for you to consider. If you fail to receive a proposal that meets your needs, you’ll have to start the process all over again, and most organizations simply don’t have the time. Conversely, NJPA contracts provide prepared agreements from reliable providers that make it easy to select the products you need. These contracts satisfy your competitive solicitation requirements, without limiting your choice of service providers.
NJPA contracts bring purchasers and vendors together, providing competitive pricing for a wide variety of goods and services offered by reputable businesses. You can participate by becoming a member, and membership is free. Your NJPA member ID # will be delivered via email, with additional materials mailed to you. To learn more, visit NJPAcoop.org/join or call 888-894-1930.
Eastman’s Carpet and Flooring is a proud member of the NJPA. We’ve had the opportunity to work with some fabulous clients and other vendors through the NJPA program. If you would like more information on working with Eastman’s Carpet and Flooring through NJPA give us a call at 252.726.2737.