Notes from the 2006 Greek Housing Summit

Cooperative Buying

Note: These notes are from a conversation with housing representatives from fraternity and sorority units. It may or may not reflect the opinions of the University of Illinois or agents of the institution working with fraternities and sororities.

• Need to be organized to mobilize cooperative buying effort.
• Institutional efforts have been made to help alumni get behind effort, alumni need to come together because not all of the individual organizations don't have the capacity to fund or fiscally support the sprinkler installation.
• Other campuses such as Minnesota has worked on cooperative buying efforts.
  • Started as a means to get better pricing on heating oil.
• Need to address contracts and our current model of alumni being all over the place geographically may hurt ability to move alumni forward.
• Should we hire someone to be local and provide oversight?
• Sprinkler issue is an immediate cause for us to support.
• Competitive bids may not be an issue but a cooperative buying effort would allow for people to come together to save money where possible and to also get things done later on when the need does arise.
• Cost saving may not be extensive for sprinklers but could be significant for other efforts.
• What authority do we have? What can be done immediately?
• Could undergrads be leaders in effort? Could be difficult or not allow for institutional memory.
• A small group could set nature of how people manage facilities then determine how to approach cooperative initiatives.
• Does the cooperative buying initiative involve private certified units?
• Penn State cooperative program involves alumni, students, local community players.

Solutions

• Need the continents factor to help us do something!
• Volunteers - Randy Wimmer
• How does cooperative get money from its members?
• Is a "broker approach" better? Have someone to help navigate vendors and work with them as needed. "Cooperative is a verb not a noun."
• Alumni can make recommendations.
• Would something web-based, a referral list be helpful?
• Focus on good vendors to use! Create list and share with alumni. Use testimonials.
• Donna R will set up a site - people need to provide information. Need to define scope of website.
• Randy (Sigma Pi) will outline the "scope" of the content.
• Use it as a blog? Forum for discussion to share resources (1) Donna r offered to lead this effort.
• Create "tabs" for mechanical needs and people can add topics.
• Private group would be password protected to ensure legal compliance.
• Paid advocate idea is still appealing! (2) Jim Goldwasser volunteered to assist in the development of a description for this position.
• Long-term improvements and advocacies are a different need than day to day management.
• Identify and appoint steering committee to get us organized.
• Need face to face meetings quarterly to work on this.
• Need to recruit steering committee members to participate in the meetings - needs to be consistent. Current volunteers are listed below. The need to recruit locally is still prevalent.
  • Jeff Piper
  • Randy Wimmer
  • Craig Jackson
  • Ward Hand