Ayile Arnett is driving through North Memphis in her Chevy Trailblazer, making deliveries.
Google maps leads her to a modest home, where she retrieves a small cardboard box from her backseat containing a 90-day supply of prescription drugs.
Arnett introduces herself at the door. “Hi, my name is Ayile, and I have a medication drop-off [from] Good Shepherd,” which results in some initial confusion.
These packages usually come through the mail.
But today, Arnett is demonstrating a smartphone app she created to transport people and things at no cost.
“ScripRide is basically a platform that is similar to Uber or Lyft, except for we leverage the volunteer spirit of community members in different locations,” Arnett says.
The ScripRide app is designed to help nonprofit organizations save money by tapping into a network of volunteers willing to provide both their time and vehicle for a good cause.
Right now, the app is being used by just one Memphis organization—the one Arnett is delivering for—Good Shepherd Pharmacy.
Good Shepherd isn’t your average drugstore. There’s no storefront; it’s mail order only. For a membership of $50 a month, poor patients can get certain common prescriptions that might otherwise be cost prohibitive.
"You get a list of about 300 drugs that we get through donations that are completely free,” says pharmacy founder, Dr. Philip Baker. “The people that we do help, we generally take them from three or four or $500 a month down to $50 or $60 a month."
Medicines that aren’t included in the membership, Good Shepherd sells to clients at the wholesale price.
The pharmacy has about 1,000 members. Many take upwards of five medications each for chronic conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes. They’re mostly low-income, uninsured and elderly, and many don’t have the ability or money to physically pick up their prescriptions.
That results in shipping costs of about $10 per package, which add up for both the pharmacy and clients.
This is where ScripRide can help, Arnett says. “We’re saving Good Shepherd alone, $2000 a month by offsetting the amount of money needed to pay a driver to take medication to people’s homes.”
The app is still being beta tested with just a few volunteers. But when it’s fully operational—possibly early next year—Baker says the savings could be even more significant.
“Everything innovative we’ve ever done at Good Shepherd has been because we were broke,” he says with a laugh. “We’ve had to figure out ways to get the job done with no money.”
Attracting volunteer drivers may depend on the kinds of nonprofits that eventually take up the app. Arnett says drivers could deliver food for food banks or help an organization transport patients who have mobility issues.
“A place like that or another care center like that could leverage this platform to utilize a pool of drivers who would be available and willing to drive their patients to and from their doctors’ appointments,” she says.
So other than karma points, what’s the incentive for drivers? The app records each driver’s mileage, which can be written off as a small tax credit—14 cents per mile.
“If you lived in Collierville, but you work downtown every single day, [and] there’s a place in Collierville that needs something transported from that area to downtown, you could write off your mileage for the day,” Arnette says.
Federal lawmakers are considering raising the charitable mileage rate to be on par with the tax deduction for business purposes—currently 58 cents per mile.
“The 58-cents-a-mile would be well more than the cost of gas," Baker says. "I think that would definitely be a game changer. It also means longer trips are more valuable.”
Whether the volunteers are altruistic or in need of a tax break, Baker thinks the app has the potential to carve out its own niche.
“We built a really simple tool that could be used in a lot of different ways,” he says. “Once we get out there with it, I’m confident that we’re going to find use cases that we never even dreamed of.”