OVER
HEAD
UNDER
CONTROL
Centralized Procurement for the Nonprofit Sector
Now Every Nonprofit Can Pay Less for the
Administrative Services They Need
- Rapid Quotes
- Negotiated Savings
- Exclusive Deals
- Never Any Upfront Fees
- No Obligation To Buy
- No Demands On Your Time
Four Ways Your Nonprofit Can Save With ACRE
Instant Savings
More than 200 nonprofit discount offers, ACRE-negotiated deals, and exclusive ACRE rebates are available in ACRE’s Discount Clearinghouse.
Savings Finder
Leveraging deep pricing insights and expanded access to the nonprofit market equips ACRE to negotiate deals most individual nonprofits can’t get alone.
Exclusive Savings
ACRE works with providers to promote time-limited and promotional offers, group deals for multiple nonprofits, and other innovative sales and savings opportunities.
Labor Savings
Nonprofits in need of low-cost administrative and project management support can save with several outsourced services managed by ACRE.
The Done-For-You Path To
Better Pricing
1. Submit a Request
Tell us what you’re looking to buy or, if it’s a service, tell us what you currently pay for it.
2. We Go to Work
We source as many options as possible, compare pricing and then, armed with historic sales price information, we negotiate appropriately
3. You Choose
Review the options, and decide what works for you. No obligation to buy.
Or Find An Instant Deal
The Do-It-Yourself Way
ACRE's Discount Clearinghouse
- The Largest Online Repository of Nonprofit Deals and Discounts
- More than 200 Nonprofit Offers in Dozens of Categories
- Exclusive Special Offers from Service Providers and Rebates Directly from ACRE
Your Ally In Comprehensive Cost Management
Well-run nonprofits are doing all the right things to reduce excess administrative costs
But they can only go so far when it comes to impacting purchase prices.
ACRE helps them go farther and save more by bringing three key assets to the table:
Time
Most nonprofits don’t have time to revisit pricing regularly, re-source vendors, and engage in strategically extensive back-and-forth negotiations. That’s all ACRE does.
Market Expertise
Deep market and product knowledge enables insightful assessment of the value of variations in product features and the total cost implications of various service terms
Negotiating Leverage
Most nonprofits lack sufficient buying power on their own to meaningfully impact pricing. ACRE’s sector-wide focus on the nonprofit community creates the needed scale.
BEFORE YOU BUY ANYTHING
Not Buying Right Now?
We get it. But you know you will be soon enough. And when you are, we’re here to help save you money. Stay in the loop by signing up for ACRE’s monthly newsletter. You get the latest deals and discount offers for nonprofits and resources on managing nonprofit cost issues.
The Skinny On All-Things ACRE
Who Is ACRE?
Administrative Cost Reduction Experts (ACRE) was founded in 2022 by Craig Price, CAE, a former associate executive director and senior management team member for a $40+ million national membership organization.
In more than 20 years of working in administrative leadership roles with associations and charitable organizations, he demonstrated a commitment to the exceptional stewardship of resources given to organizations in the form of dues and donations. All spending had to be carefully considered, purpose-driven, and minimized to the extent practical.
That commitment eventually became ACRE. Initially focused on associations and later expanding to all nonprofits, ACRE explores and promotes a variety of approaches to cost reduction within the sector, including creating opportunities to leverage the combined buying power of the nonprofit community.
Craig remains the president of ACRE. He also serves as Vice Chair on the Board of Directors of Polycreek, a national 501(c)(3) that is using AI to battle online child abuse and exploitation.
In his role with ACRE, Craig works with various partners and contractors with expertise in areas like market research, procurement practices, and cost containment in the age of AI.
Collectively, they are the experts in Administrative Cost Reduction Experts.
How Does It Work?
Most cost reduction services require a lot of internal time and effort for the client.
ACRE operates differently. There’s no contracts or memberships or long-term relationship.
ACRE isn’t a consultant. It’s more of a mechanism that you can engage anytime you’re wanting to make a purchase or you have a service contract up for renewal.
That mechanism unleashes a cost-saving machine, accessing pricing data from hundreds of vendors in more than 100 cost categories.
ACRE not only accesses pricing data and uses that information to negotiate offers, we also work with providers to create special exclusive offers to the nonprofit community.
ACRE also manages the Discount Clearinghouse, the largest online repository of discounts and deals specifically for nonprofits.
In addition, ACRE manages an outsourced labor program that taps into professional expertise working with AI to provide a variety of low-cost administrative services.
ACRE exists soley to help nonprofits reduce administrative costs.
How Much Does It Cost?
Some of ACRE’s services and resources are free. This includes soliciting bids for smaller nonprofit purchases less than $5000 (minimum of $1000 per purchase or per year.)
For larger purchases above $5000, there is no upfront fee for ACRE’s work to negotiate price quotes. ACRE is only paid a percentage of the amount of savings we generate for nonprofit clients. And that’s built into the bid price. If you don’t like the bid, you don’t pay anything.
There are never any upfront fees or any obligation for nonprofits to buy or accept any offer.
ACRE also manages a range of low-cost outsourced services to help nonprofits reduce labor costs. There is a fee associated with the use of those services. But there is no upfront fee or additional management fee.
How Is ACRE Compensated?
In addition to the percentage of savings ACRE receives on large nonprofit purchases, ACRE participates in numerous affiliate or referral programs that many providers offer. Those programs pay what is essentially a finders fee whenever a nonprofit clicks on a link on the ACRE website that sends them to the provider’s web site and results in a purchase.
Those referral fees range in amount and duration. The referral fees do not result in increased pricing for the client.
ACRE prominently displays when it is participating in a referral program. ACRE’s Discount Clearinghouse is highly transparent about the existence of those relationships.
In addition, when companies allow it and it makes sense to do so, ACRE shares a portion of its referral fee with the nonprofit that made the purchase. This is done through a rebate from ACRE to the nonprofit after ACRE receives the referral fee. It’s another way ACRE helps deliver the best pricing possible to the nonprofit community.
Nonprofit discount offers that pay referral fees and those that include ACRE rebates are given prominent positioning in the relevant Discount Clearinghouse categories, However, ACRE searches for and posts any nonprofit discount offer from any provider that it finds. Any company offering a nonprofit discount can get a free listing in the Discount Clearinghouse.