Donald Scott II: Transforming Youth Commutes

PiggyBack Network was created to empower parents & educators to increase participation rates at school, sports, and activities – while lowering the stress levels required to get kids to class, practice, and competition every day for 15 years. Our youth transportation platform centers on trust and safety, our business model is rooted in equitable access, and our mission is to remove the barriers blocking active families and unlock the potential of future leaders.

A handful of organizations are tackling the challenge of youth transportation that families face. We set ourselves apart in three key areas. 

Sustainability: Our pricing model is structured to enable all parents to rely on PiggyBack Network for transportation regularly.  In this way, we want to be integrated into the daily lifestyle of the busy family with active kids going to school, after school, and weekend activities.

Business Model: Incentivized carpooling is a novel concept.  We’ve established a new type of insurance policy to cover our members. The traditional “rideshare” model has a template.  We are trailblazers at this moment and are being recognized as such. 

Reliability: PiggyBack Network is available to every family nationwide where youth transportation is needed. From large metropolitan areas to rural towns, our marketplace is powered by the parents. Therefore, we can be a resource without the city density or district budget constraints that others in our space must contend with.

PiggyBack Points power our parent-driven carpool marketplace. When a PiggyBack Member requests a ride from their selected pool of matched families, they will buy points to reserve the ride.  When the ride is completed, the driving PiggyBack Member family will receive a portion of those points.  As earned points accumulate, they can be used to request a new ride or redeemed for gift cards to purchase gas, groceries, coffee, etc. We use the points-based system for two reasons:  1, to ensure that our drivers are incentivized by safety, community, and reliability, not money, and 2, to ensure that the network is available to all families: those who may never be able to reciprocate a shared ride, those who are giving rides already, and those in the middle – who can drive the kids sometimes, and need a ride for the kids sometimes.

Based on the routes we’ve seen driven thus far, many rides are within the 5 – 10 point range.  Most kids have short rides that take a lot of time (a 5-minute round trip to school with traffic and waiting can use up 60 minutes of our day).  We’ve found that most PiggyBack families are driving a route twice to earn enough points to request a ride using those earned points.  From a purchasing perspective, we’ve seen families purchase a few points each week, and some families are purchasing enough points to last them the month – given the regularity of the schedule of rides needed. PiggyBack Network is meant to fit into the busy lifestyle of the active family…and to add value.

We’ve learned over the past few years that TRUST is our primary currency. Our first customers are families of kids attending our schools and after-school activities. We built PiggyBack Network for our communities; thankfully, they see the value in the solution.  Our first official partnership was established with the YMCA of Metro Chicago in 2023.  As a trusted organization focused on elevating communities, our mission and vision alignment allowed us to join forces to increase YMCA participation rates around the City of Chicago. We continue building relationships with other organizations in the city and nationwide.

Our strategy is to partner with schools and youth organizations.  We are in the process of finalizing additional YMCA partnerships in major cities on the East Coast.  We are responding to opportunities presented by the School Bus Driver shortages across the country – specifically in Illinois, but we know the same is true in cities in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, California, and Ohio – as school leaders and parents from these affected communities have been calling us.  We continue to share the story of PiggyBack Network with national and international charter & private schools, non-profit organizations focused on equitable access to opportunity, and sports leagues that thrive on increased participation rates. As many parents are also employees, we’ve been conversing with corporate ESG leaders to discuss sustainability, productivity, and employee engagement.  Our growth strategy is to meet parents where they are and provide them a solution that makes the logistics of youth transportation a bit less stressful.