The Disabilities Leadership Council is continuing its series highlighting important organizations and individuals in the special needs community. Today we’re focusing on eSpecialMatch.com, a social network for families with special-needs children and organizations active in the world of special needs. The goal of eSpecialMatch.com is to bring families together to share their experiences, and to connect families with providers of important services. Organizations can also post events and updates on the site.
The editors of the Disabilities Leadership Council’s blog were fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Mike Radicone, the founder of eSpecialMatch.com. He has extensive experience in special needs education, having worked as a teacher of children with special needs since graduating from college. Disabilities Leadership Council founder Stuart Flaum said, “It’s wonderful that Mike has found so many ways to contribute to the special needs community. His website is truly innovative, and has done a lot to bring people together.” In addition to running eSpecialMatch.com with his wife, he continues to teach at a school on Long Island in New York. Indeed, eSpecialMatch.com has no other employees; the website more or less runs itself. Mike did say that he tries to “update the site every couple of days, to make sure it is fresh. I make sure that its working, send emails to members, and send out a monthly newsletter. I also keep a running blog on the site.”
Mike originally was inspired to start eSpecialMatch.com when he was searching the iTunes database and the site automatically ordered his results by those that most related to his search. Mike said, “I thought it would be cool to match families that way. Parents would fill out criteria, which would then go into a searchable database. People could then search out database and look for people to match up with.” Mike also said that he used existing social networking sites like Facebook to help him model his site. He said his teaching experience helped him in coming up with the criteria which parents would fill out for the website. Mike says that “I tried to create a broad spectrum for the profiles, so that families could know as much as they could about a possible contact.”
According to Mike, eSpecialMatch.com is a for-profit company. However, all of its revenue comes from advertising, and it is 100% free to join and be a member. The site does not receive outside funding from either the government or other non-governmental organizations.
So far, says Mike, eSpecialMatch.com has been “moderately successful in achieving our goals. We launched 18 months ago and by now we’ve worked all the bugs out and have a fully functioning, working site. We’re currently focusing on getting more members.” eSpecialMatch.com currently has a strong, nationwide base of membership that is concentrated on the East Coast. Mike says that he looks to gain new members in several different ways. He searches the web for other special-needs organizations to trade links with them, to have his website written about in as many places on the web as possible; he has placed an advertisement on Facebook; and he goes to conferences and workshops to give presentations about the site and meet with families and other professionals. According to Mike, this last method is the most effective, as it is the best way to educate people about his site and show that it is open to anyone affiliated with the special needs community. Mike also said that he keeps profiles on a number of different social networking and blog sites: “I use Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogspot, Tumbler, and Twitter. We basically have as many free social networks and blogs you can have, which keep updating to the site.”
Mike has also made sure that eSpecialMatch.com is free from predators and solicitors. The site is hosted on a secure server, and Mike immediately removes any solicitors that are reported by the site’s members. However, people who are unfairly removed can petition to be placed back on the site. Mike says that profiles must be created by a parent or legal guardian, not by an individual with special needs, for the reason of security. Mike fears that these individuals might be preyed upon unless they are deemed capable to run their own profile by their guardians. A profile can be given over to an individual after it is created.
Mike’s ultimate goal for eSpecialMatch.com is to make it a “one-stop shop for anything to do with special needs.” Not only does he envision developing a wide array of professionals who have profiles on the site, he also has allowed members to post book reviews, travel recommendations, and events. In this way, said Mike, “Families with questions about anything can come to our site and get answers for them.”
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