Good Practices for Working With Vendors

K-12 schools, colleges, and universities often rely on vendors for technology, transportation, food service, mental health support, and other important operational functions. But outsourcing a service does not necessarily remove institutional accountability. If something goes wrong, your institution needs a functional system for receiving and responding to reports about your vendors and placing responsibility on the proper party.  

United Educators’ (UE’s) claims involving an institution’s vendor reveal a common issue: When concerns about a vendor are raised to the school, the institution merely sends along the report without doing any follow-up. If the vendor does not adequately respond to the report or take corrective action, the school may be creating liability for any resulting incident, especially where the contract at issue gives the school some degree of control over the vendor’s performance. 

Create an Institutional Reporting Path 

Vendors should not serve as the only intake point for complaints. Review your complaint reporting paths, including physical injury incidents and Title IX reports. For each reporting mechanism your school has in place: 

• Test the reporting path periodically to ensure it works as intended. 
• Train report-receivers on the importance of following up on all complaints, including those involving external vendors.
• Train report-receivers on how to share reports with vendors.
• Assign someone to follow up on reports sent to vendors to ensure appropriate action is taken.  

Track the Promises Created by the Vendor and Your Institution 

The vendor and your institution may create separate, possibly even conflicting, promises to the campus community. Ensure every vendor relationship has a departmental point person at your institution who is explicitly responsible for that relationship, including addressing and following up on complaints. If any promises are made by the vendor that are not allowed by the contract or that contradict campus promises, the point person should act to rectify the situation. 

Review Vendor Contracts 

With the help of legal counsel, create language requiring vendors to follow institutional policies where appropriate. Additionally, require that vendors report complaints to your institution in addition to following up themselves.  

Consider requiring your vendors to: 

• Notify your institution promptly of complaints involving safety, discrimination, harassment, privacy, security, or unlawful conduct. 
• Identify a vendor contact with authority to act on reports.
• Preserve documents, logs, recordings, messages, and other relevant documentation. 
• Provide written status updates and a final resolution summary of any reports of incidents or misconduct.
• Complete corrective action by stated deadlines. 
• Cooperate with institutional audits, reviews, or termination decisions if problems persist. 

Work with legal counsel to ensure all vendor contracts avoid unfavorable indemnification language. 

Verify the Vendor’s Actions 

Reporting a complaint to a vendor is not the same as resolving it.  

Maintain a complaint log that records: 

• What was reported
• When it was received
• Who reviewed it
• When the vendor was notified
• What interim measures your institution took
• What the vendor promised
• How your institution verified completion 

Verification that a vendor followed up a report should match the type of incident and risk. Additional actions may include: 

• Speaking with the complainant
• Reviewing records
• Testing the service
• Confirming staff training
• Reviewing revised procedures
• Checking whether system settings or access controls changed
• Verifying related personnel were retrained, reassigned, or removed
• Assessing whether additional safeguards are needed

Use Complaint Trends to Inform the Vendor Relationship 

Conduct annual reviews of vendor complaints to identify patterns and use those trends in renewal, expansion, and sourcing decisions. Issues like repeated complaints, slow responses, or weak corrective actions may indicate the vendor is no longer a good fit for your institution.

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