Potential Vendors

Vendor Registry
If you want to sell goods or provide services to the County and have not already done so, we encourage you to sign up on our Vendor Registry.

The Vendor Registry is a database of firms who want to do business with the County. Fill out the online form and we’ll contact you when we are preparing a bid for a service or goods you provide.  

Two important documents for every potential vendor are the county’s Ethics Ordinance and the County’s Purchasing Ordinance.

Bidder Check List

• Carefully read and understand the bid documents prior to submitting a bid, proposal, or quote. If you have questions, please contact us.
• Carefully follow all of the instructions and conditions. Improperly completed and/or incomplete bids, proposals, and quotes may be considered "non-responsive and rejected.
• Your bid may require a bid bond or certified bid check of bond. A money order or cashier’s check may be substituted for the certified bid check of bond.
• Ensure your bid is submitted prior to the advertised bid closing time. If your bid is late, it cannot be accepted. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Sales calls
Caroline County receives “cold calls” from salespeople every day. We understand that each vendor has a service or product that they feel is valuable. In turn, we have very few staff available to handle purchasing and our rules do not allow the County to buy goods or services in response to cold calls. We can’t “spare just five minutes” to hear an unsolicited pitch. The only time we sit down with vendors is when we initiate the meeting. Please rest assured that we’ll do our best to let qualified firms know about our bid opportunities.

Note: Under our Ethics laws, we cannot and will not accept gifts from any vendor or potential vendor. All gifts will be returned. Vendors and potential vendors have a positive obligation to report any violations of the Ethics law.

eMDmarketplace
We strongly encourage vendors to register with eMaryland Marketplace (eMM). eMaryland Marketplace is the State of Maryland's electronic bid board. All County formal procurement solicitations are posted there. When you register with eMM, you provide your email address and the commodity and services codes applicable to your business. When we post solicitations, eMM automatically sends an email to all those businesses registered with the codes that match the commodities/services required by our solicitation. All state of Maryland agencies and counties utilize eMM, so you will have access to those solicitations as well.


Routine Purchasing Documents
The County generally uses standard contracts for its purchasing.  You can access examples of these standard contracts in the Purchasing and Procurement section of the Document Center.