Purchasing Agreements

Most departments buy equipment the hard way: write a specification, advertise a bid, wait out the response period, evaluate what comes back, take it to the board for award. Cooperative purchasing agreements let you skip nearly all of that. Another public agency has already run the solicitation, in public, to the standard its own law demands, and your department is allowed to buy from the contract that resulted.

This page is sponsored by NPPGov. It describes several cooperatives, including ones that compete with them; sponsorship pays for the page and did not decide what it says or which options appear. Note also that the step-by-step guide recapped further down was written by NPPGov’s executive director, as flagged there.

Why they are an easy way to buy

The mechanism is usually called piggybacking. A lead public agency writes the specification, advertises a competitive bid or request for proposals, opens the responses publicly, evaluates them and awards a contract. Because that process was competitive and public, other public entities are permitted to buy from the same contract without repeating it. For a department that would otherwise need three quotes or a formal solicitation, the work has already been done and documented.

• No solicitation of your own. The competitive process behind the contract is what satisfies the bid requirement, so procurement that would run for months can run in days.
• Pooled volume. These contracts are written for hundreds or thousands of agencies at once, so the pricing reflects that scale rather than a single small order from a single small department.
• Joining is normally free. Sourcewell registration costs nothing; NPPGov charges no membership fee and imposes no purchasing obligation or minimum.
• You still deal with the vendor. Your department issues its own purchase order and pays the supplier directly. The cooperative does not sit in the middle of the transaction or take your money.
• The contracts are written for the fire service. Apparatus, PPE, SCBA, rescue tools and EMS equipment, not generic municipal supply that happens to include a few fire items.

Two responsibilities stay with you. Confirm that your own state and local procurement law permits buying from another agency’s contract; most do, under interlocal or joint-powers statutes, but a cooperative’s legal opinion is not a substitute for your attorney’s. And if grant money is paying, the funder’s rules apply on top: cooperatives commonly state that their process is consistent with the Assistance to Firefighters Grant program, but the obligation to document that compliance remains the department’s.

Three that fire departments use

Sourcewell

Sourcewell is a Minnesota service cooperative created by the state legislature as a local unit of government, governed by a board of elected county commissioners, mayors, council members and school board members. Because it is itself a public agency, its solicitations are public procurements and its staff are government employees. Registration is free and open to government and education entities nationwide, and its firefighting category carries contracts with apparatus manufacturers and equipment suppliers, Alexis Fire Equipment and REV Group among them.

Browse Sourcewell’s firefighting contracts

NPPGov

NPPGov (National Purchasing Partners) is a national cooperative serving public entities in the United States and Canada. Its contracts are solicited and awarded by lead public agencies, and NPPGov then makes the awarded agreement available to its members, which removes the need for you to run your own RFP or gather three quotes. There are no membership fees, purchasing obligations or minimums, and invoices and payments go straight to the vendor. Eligible members explicitly include fire agencies, fire districts and departments, volunteer departments and EMS and ambulance services, and NPPGov states that its competitive bid process is consistent with the Assistance to Firefighters Grants program.

Browse NPPGov’s Fire & Rescue contracts

HGACBuy

HGACBuy is the cooperative purchasing program of the Houston-Galveston Area Council, the largest of Texas’s 24 councils of government and a political subdivision of the state. It operates under the Texas Interlocal Cooperation Act: a member signs an Interlocal Contract with H-GAC, which then acts as its purchasing agent: developing specifications, soliciting vendors, holding public bid openings, evaluating responses and awarding the contracts. Despite the Texas origin, members are spread across the rest of the United States as well. Contracts typically run two or three years, and members issue their own purchase orders and pay the supplier directly.

The contract most fire departments will want is EE11-24, Emergency Medical, Safety and Rescue Equipment. Its supplier list runs to dozens of names familiar from the apparatus floor, Fire-Dex, Innotex, Holmatro, Amkus, HAIX and Casco Industries among them, with the solicitation and per-supplier documents downloadable in full.

HGACBuy contract EE11-24 documents

These three are not the only options. BuyBoard, OMNIA Partners, Equalis Group and various state-run programs serve the same purpose, and the right choice depends on what your state authorizes and which cooperative holds a contract with the vendor you actually want to buy from.

Getting started, step by step

The National Volunteer Fire Council published a practical guide to this in February 2026, written by Bill DeMars. Its nine steps condense to roughly this:

1. Understand how cooperative procurement actually works, and what it would mean for your department specifically, before committing to anything.
2. Research the cooperatives on four points: reputation and track record, whether their contracts cover what you actually buy, how usable their systems are, and what membership requires in paperwork and fees.
3. Compare them side by side, score them against your needs rather than joining the first one you find, and talk to each before deciding.
4. Get legal and management sign-off. Your attorney confirms the agreement fits state and local procurement law; your chief or board approves the direction.
5. Enroll: paperwork and authorisations, eligibility, registration, and any fees, with the deadlines tracked.
6. Train whoever does the buying, and write down your own process for evaluating a contract, ordering, receiving and who is accountable for each decision.
7. Use the support on offer. Most cooperatives run training, webinars and customer service that members do not take advantage of.
8. Measure whether it is working: what you saved, what the people doing the buying think, and what to change next year.
9. Stay current. Contracts expire, vendors change and cooperatives add categories.

Worth knowing when you read the original: Bill DeMars is executive director of NPPGov, one of the cooperatives on this page, and NVFC members can access NPPGov as a membership benefit. The steps hold up regardless, but it is not neutral ground.

Read the full NVFC guide

General information for fire service decision makers. It is not legal or procurement advice; confirm any cooperative’s standing under your own state and local law with your attorney and your authority having jurisdiction before relying on it. Contract numbers, suppliers and terms change; check the cooperative’s own site for current details. Listing here is not an endorsement, and FireBrigade.com does not speak for any of these organizations.