Project Porch Swing connects shoppers to education funding

Project Porch Swing is a new online shopping platform that launched in early June. It provides more than a simple online shopping experience; 60 percent of revenue is donated to education foundations around the Memphis area in an effort to provide consistent, long-term support to help close funding gaps.

The site, projectporchswingmemphis.com, includes hundreds of retailers in numerous categories, many of which are well-known brands ranging from clothing to home improvement and office supplies.

The site is set up to allow shoppers the opportunity to choose education foundations that support public schools in Shelby County, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown and DeSoto County. The money goes to foundations as opposed to school districts.

“We look at this as a way the community wants to help itself it can,” said Project Porch Swing’s Stephen Stewart. “If they don’t want to help themselves and scream at the top of their lungs that there is no funding, that’s on them. This is a tool a community can use to support issues that are important to them. For us that’s education. We can help close that gap.”

A team of six created the network as a way to use retailers that exist on affiliate networks in a way to help fund education in the South. For now, the retailers on the network are national brands but Stewart said the eventual plan is to use local retailers.

Memphis was chosen as the starting point for the effort with assistance from Lyft, Airbnb and Spotify with the plan to eventually expand into Nashville, Chattanooga and Knoxville.

The program kicked off with a campaign with the Lyft Ambassador Program that allowed first-time riders in the Memphis area who enter the phrase “Lyft4Memphis” in the payment section of the app before booking a ride to donate $6 to the foundations.