Purchasing Association of Cooperative Entities (PACE)

The Purchasing Association of Cooperative Entities is a regional cooperative purchasing organization that aggregates the buying power of its member public agencies - including counties, municipalities, school districts, and special districts - to establish competitively awarded master contracts that all members can use. By combining volume across many public entities and running a single competitive procurement, PACE allows its members to access contracts for commonly needed goods and services without each agency having to conduct its own time-consuming and resource-intensive solicitation process. The cooperative purchasing model is enabled under most state procurement codes and mirrors the structure of nationally recognized cooperatives like NASPO ValuePoint and OMNIA Partners.

What is PACE?

PACE functions as a lead public agency model. In this structure, one member agency conducts a full competitive procurement on behalf of all members, satisfying both state law competition requirements and any applicable federal requirements when federal funds are involved. The resulting master contract is then made available to other PACE member agencies, who issue purchase orders directly to the awarded vendor citing the cooperative contract as the basis for their procurement. The vendor prices are typically anchored to the volume anticipated from the entire cooperative membership, so members often access pricing that would not be available to them individually.

PACE contracts typically cover categories where public agencies have recurring, predictable needs: office supplies, technology products, fleet vehicles, janitorial supplies, construction materials, and professional services in categories like staffing, grounds maintenance, and IT support. The cooperative's value proposition is time savings: a school district that needs laptops can issue a purchase order against a PACE technology contract same week, rather than spending three to six months running its own competitive process. This is especially valuable for smaller agencies that lack dedicated procurement staff.

Why it matters for contractors

For contractors selling products or services that public agencies commonly need, winning a PACE master contract is a business development force multiplier. A single competitive win creates an authorized sales channel to every PACE member agency, which can number in the hundreds across a region. The contractor does not need to respond to each agency's individual solicitation; instead, the cooperative contract is a pre-qualified channel through which member agencies can order directly.

Contractors pursuing PACE contract awards should treat the initial competitive solicitation as seriously as any large single-agency procurement. The proposal must clearly articulate pricing that is fair and reasonable across the anticipated volume, and it must address how the contractor will handle purchase orders from member agencies across potentially different jurisdictions and geographic service areas. Post-award, contractor success depends on actively marketing the cooperative contract to member agencies, because most agencies need to be told the contract exists before they will use it.

Example

A cloud software firm specializing in document management solutions learns that PACE is soliciting for enterprise content management software and implementation services. The firm responds to the solicitation, wins a three-year master contract, and receives a list of PACE member agencies totaling over 200 counties, municipalities, and school districts in the region. The firm's sales team contacts member agency IT directors, offering a cooperative contract that eliminates the need for each agency to run its own RFP. Within the first year, fourteen member agencies issue purchase orders against the PACE contract, generating revenue the firm would not have reached through traditional single-agency procurement alone.