Privacy Policy

1. The principle we design around

SpecialNeeds.org is operated by Mama Mimi Inc., a Florida nonprofit corporation and 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

We collect information for identified purposes reasonably related to providing, improving, protecting and supporting this service. We do not try to collect everything we could legally collect.

Most of this site works with no account and nothing volunteered. You can read every public resource without telling us anything about your family.

2. Disability and health information gets extra care

Reading a page about a condition does not mean you or your child has that condition. You may be a grandparent, a teacher, a therapist, a student, or simply curious.

So we do not turn browsing into a health profile. We do not infer a diagnosis from the pages you read, the searches you run or the resources you download, and we do not store a disability profile about you based on that behavior.

The only condition or topic interests we associate with a person are the ones an adult explicitly selects — for example when choosing what email topics to receive.

We do not sell personal information. We do not disclose inferred or stated disability or health interests to third parties for their own independent behavioral advertising.

3. What we collect

Account and identity. Sign-in accounts on this site are currently for our own editorial staff only; there is no public or family account to create today. For a staff account we hold an email address, an account identifier, and — when the person signs in with Google — the identifiers Google returns to confirm who they are (such as a Google account id, email address, and name or profile image if Google provides them). We never receive or store a Google password. If we offer public accounts in the future, we will describe them here and in the Terms of Use before that happens.

Location you give us. A ZIP code, state, or city/county you type in, plus the state or county we derive from a ZIP code so we can show nearby resources. Device location (GPS) is not used today. If we ever add it, it will be optional and off until you turn it on.

Interests and preferences you choose. Conditions, topics, resource types, geographic areas and community interests you select, along with notification preferences such as frequency and pause settings.

Activity and technical information. Search terms and result counts, page and feature interactions counted in aggregate, and standard request information such as IP address, browser and device type. Our own database has no IP address or device column; that request information is handled by our hosting provider in ordinary server logs under their retention schedule, and we read it in the moment for security, abuse prevention and rate limiting.

Content you submit. Corrections, suggested resources, organizations and events you submit, volunteer interest, an optional name, email and affiliation, and any messages you send us. Public review posting is not open yet; if we open it, reviews will be covered here and in the Community Guidelines.

Communications. Where a signup form exists, your email address and a consent record for the topics you chose. This is stored, not yet used: we have not launched newsletters, resource or event alerts, drip sequences or sponsored communications, and no marketing email has been sent from this site. Sending will not begin until the sending system supports unsubscribe and preference controls.

Saved on your device only. Accessibility settings (text size, contrast, motion, typeface), saved resources, checklist ticks and journey progress are stored in your own browser's local storage. They are not sent to us and are not tied to an account.

4. Why we collect it and how we use it

• to show you resources relevant to where you live and what you asked about
• to record which emails you asked for and at what frequency, so that if and when we launch email you receive only what you chose
• to review, verify and publish corrections and community submissions, and to follow up with you if you allowed contact
• to find gaps in our research — for example searches that return nothing become work for our editors
• to keep the site working, accessible and secure, and to prevent spam, scraping and abuse
• to keep records of consent, so we can show what you agreed to and when
• to report aggregate, non-identifying numbers to funders, grantmakers and the public

We do not use your information to build advertising profiles, and we do not use search terms or page views to target you individually.

5. When information is disclosed

We disclose personal information only in these situations:

• Service providers who operate the site for us, under contract and only for that purpose (see the next section).
• When something you submitted is published. If a correction or submission of yours results in published content, that content is public. Any display name is shown only as you approved it; we never publish your email address.
• Legal reasons: to comply with law or valid legal process, to enforce our terms, or to protect the rights, safety or property of families, the public, or Mama Mimi Inc.
• Organizational change: if Mama Mimi Inc. merges, is acquired, transfers a program, or dissolves, information may transfer to a successor that agrees to honor this policy.
• With your specific permission, for something you asked us to do.

Sponsorship does not transfer your identity. A sponsor may pay Mama Mimi Inc. to reach our audience — for example to sponsor a newsletter that we send. The sponsor does not receive our subscriber list or your email address.

Planned, not active: if we ever pass your details to an organization as an actual lead or referral, we will ask you at that moment, in that context, in clear words that name who receives the information and why. We will not rely on this policy as permission. No lead transfer of this kind happens today.

6. Service providers we currently use

• Cloud hosting and application platform: serves the site and processes requests, including IP addresses in ordinary server logs.
• Managed database and authentication platform: stores accounts, subscriber records, submissions and content records, and handles sign-in.
• Google, as a sign-in provider, for staff sign-in.

Web fonts are served from this site itself, not from a third-party font network, so loading a page does not send your IP address to a font provider.

Not in use yet: no email delivery provider is connected, because no email is sent. When one is added, it will be listed here before the first email goes out.

These providers act on our instructions for these purposes. We do not permit them to use your information for their own advertising.

7. AI providers

We use AI services to help research and organize public resource information — for example reading a state agency page and drafting a summary for a person to check. Today those requests contain public source material and our own editorial text.

We do not send account information, subscriber lists, email addresses, or a person's saved interests to an AI provider as part of that research, and we do not use AI to profile visitors.

AI output is not treated as authoritative evidence. A person decides what is published.

8. Cookies and analytics

We do not use third-party advertising trackers, advertising cookies, social media pixels or cross-site tracking tools on this site.

Cookies and similar storage are used for two things: keeping a staff member signed in to our editorial tools, and remembering your own accessibility and saved-resource settings in your browser.

Our analytics are first-party and counts-only: an event name, an optional page or state, and a date. Search terms are stored to find content gaps, and are not linked to your account or to an advertising identifier.

If we ever add a third-party analytics or advertising tool, we will update this policy and this section before turning it on.

9. Children

This site contains information about children and families, but it is not designed for children to use. Email signup, submissions and any future accounts or community participation are intended for adults 18 and older.

We do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children, and we do not ask visitors to provide a child's name, date of birth, diagnosis or medical records. Please do not send us a child's medical records or private details. If you believe a child has given us personal information, email us and we will delete it.

10. Security

We use encryption in transit, database access rules that restrict who can read what, hashed one-time tokens for email confirmation and preference links, rate limiting, and staff access limited to the people who need it.

No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise. If we discover a breach affecting personal information, we will act promptly and notify affected people where required or appropriate.

11. How long we keep things

• Staff account records: while the person has access, and until we remove the account.
• Email signups: while you are subscribed. If you ask to be removed we keep a minimal suppression record — including a one-way hash of your email address — so we do not add you back by accident.
• Consent records: kept as long as needed to show what was agreed and when.
• Submissions and corrections: kept as part of our editorial record, because published information needs a traceable source.
• Search terms and aggregate counts: kept as editorial research, without account identifiers.
• Server logs: held by our hosting provider under their retention schedule. We do not store request logs in our own database.

Being straight with you about retention: apart from short-lived email confirmation and preference links, we do not yet run automatic purge schedules. In practice the records above are kept until we delete them, or until you ask us to. Building documented retention and automatic purge schedules is planned privacy work, and we will state the actual periods here once they exist rather than promise them now.

12. Your choices

• Use the whole site without an account, and without giving us a ZIP code or email address.
• Change or pause your email topics, frequency and location, or ask to be removed from the list entirely, by emailing us. Because no email has been sent yet, there is no unsubscribe link in an email to use; before we send our first email, the sending system will include unsubscribe and preference links.
• Ask us to access, correct or delete information about you. Today we handle these by hand when you write to us; for email subscribers there are also self-service export and deletion tools.
• Clear your own device settings, saved resources and progress by clearing your browser's storage for this site.

If and when email is running, messages that are strictly operational — for example confirming a request you made — may still be sent while your request is being handled.

13. How to make a privacy request

Email help@specialneeds.org with what you want: access, correction, deletion, a change to communication preferences, or information about disclosures. Please write from the email address you used with us, or tell us enough to find your record.

We aim to respond within 30 days. We may need to verify that the request is really from you, and we may keep information we are required to keep or that we need for security, legal or record-integrity reasons. If we cannot do all of what you asked, we will tell you what we did and why.

See Your Privacy Choices for the full request process and for state-specific rights as they apply.

14. Changes to this policy

When this policy changes we update the version and last-updated date on this page and keep prior versions available. Consent records reference the version that was in effect when consent was given.

Questions about privacy go to help@specialneeds.org.