After Temple’s office supplies contracts expired in late June, the university’s procurement department collaborated with Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh on a joint request for proposal to take advantage of their collective spending on office supplies.
The new proposal will save the three universities 7%, or $400,000, from their previous contracts. The universities’ three contracts expired around the same time, so Temple’s purchasing department decided to open the conversation to the two other state-related universities.
“We’ll oftentimes ask each other, ‘Hey, where are you sourcing this’ or ‘Have you any issues with getting this particular supply?’” said Donna Schweibenz, senior director of purchasing services. “When our university contract was coming up for office supplies, looking at our current contract and how our spend had changed from when originally put the previous contract in place, I didn’t feel confident that we could get a very good volume discount because of the decrease in our spend.”
Schweibenz collaborated directly with Pitt and Penn State when the contracts expired. All three universities are state-related and have received flat state funding since the 2019-20 academic year.
The contract is now between ODP Business Solutions, previously Office Depot Business Solutions, and Supra Office Solutions, a tier one, minority-owned supplier. The Philadelphia-located business, who are a direct supplier for ODP, worked with Pitt for their previous contract.
“Given a time when state funding has been flat for six years, and inflation is high, being able to reduce cost is a victory,” said Ken Kaiser, senior vice president and chief operating officer. “It helps us keep tuition increases as low as possible and allows us to not have to look elsewhere to make cuts to areas that folks may be more interested in.”
Temple has received flat allocations from the state since 2019. The university cut their operating budget by $54 million this year to keep tuition costs down, but they also increased tuition by an average of 4.2% for the 2024-25 year. Pennsylvania is the third-most expensive state for in-state tuition and fees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Temple’s procurement department hopes to expand the collaboration to other state universities. Any kind of “larger spend” category could be on the table in future joint contracts, Schweibenz said.
Facilities items such as janitorial materials, audio visual equipment or other basic needs don’t differentiate vastly between universities, so future contracts could include those supplies.
“[Schweibenz] kept this in the back of her mind for a couple years when she knew the timing would work out where their contracts would be ending around the same time our contracts were,” said Farrah Al-Mansoor, senior director of finance and administration. “It speaks to the fact that we do keep in touch with other schools, even if we’re not always doing something as official as this, we do have contacts that are helpful.”
The Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a bill to create performance-based funding for state universities this summer. Some examples of performance metrics include retention, graduation rates, profiles of students and employment rates. More than 30 states use this type of funding, so Pennsylvania could use performance-based funding to improve their affordability.
ODP Business Solutions and Supra both won out the joint contracts after Temple had previously worked with Staples Business Advantage and Guy Brown, a minority-owned business from Texas. Each of the bigger supply companies, both ODP and Staples, utilize diversity suppliers in their contracts.
The procurement department is currently scheduling times to look for more opportunities and larger contracts to possibly collaborate again on another RFP. Another collaboration would most likely be on large-spending commodities that all the universities have in common.
“[This contract] showed that even though we’re in different areas within the state, we could still work together on providing the goods in this instance that would meet the needs for all three of our universities, and how to do that through one avenue,” Schweibenz said.
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