Announcing the 2020 AWS Imagine Grant nonprofit organization winners

Finding a cure for Type 1 Diabetes, fostering citizenship through public media, discovering our legacies through handwriting transcription, protecting the biodiversity of our planet, strengthening the arts and culture sector, championing pro bono legal advocacy for nonprofits and NGOs across the globe, and so much more. This year’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant recipients are developing solutions for sector-wide challenges and serving as force multipliers for good in their fields.

Since the launch of the Imagine Grant program in 2018, AWS has awarded over $2.5 million in cash, AWS Promotional Credit, and AWS training support to 26 nonprofit organizations. Each year, the Imagine Grant program seeks to fund nonprofit organizations who demonstrate a mission-critical application of technology that will result in magnitudes of impact for their beneficiaries and core mission operations.

This year, we received a record-breaking number of submissions, with organizations of all sizes and mission areas putting forward thoughtful proposals.

The 2020-2021 AWS Imagine Grant winners and runners-up are:

Winners

• Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) is leveraging big data, analytics, visualization, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and augmented reality (AR) to create a comprehensive, cloud-based, secure registry of diabetes data to drive the right actions across the diabetes research ecosystem to accelerate cures, prevention, and treatment of Type 1 Diabetes.
• NatureServe is reimagining bioinformatics to better address threats to biodiversity on our planet. They will develop a cutting-edge biodiversity data and analytics solution for mapping species locations with high precision, modeling their habitats, and assessing their risk of extinction.
• FamilySearch is using ML for handwriting recognition to support and expedite the transcription of genealogically significant historical documents worldwide at scale across multiple languages, regions, and dialects. The created free searchable indexes help individuals make family and heritage discoveries. Their historical records database currently contains nearly six billion digital images.
• Thomson Reuters Foundation is developing a ground-breaking digital platform empowering civil society organizations and social enterprises at the frontlines of protecting human rights to access free legal support and customized opportunities for learning, knowledge-sharing, innovation, and collaboration. Their program, TrustLaw, will use this platform to facilitate access and delivery of pro bono legal support, research, and resources for organizations across the globe to achieve social justice and advocate for legal and policy reform.
• Tessitura Network is innovating with technology to transform the business of arts and culture. They are delivering secure, advanced digital capabilities to make it easier for cultural organizations to achieve their goals.
• GBH is implementing a highly scalable, cloud-based video editing system to transform the way public media organizations are able to deliver educational, illuminating, and inspiring content that fosters citizenship nationwide.

Runners-up

• The American College of Radiology® (ACR®), a world leader in medical imaging and radiation oncology research, is using artificial intelligence to automate pixel cleaning related to COVID-19 and other research areas to make data available that will profoundly impact public health. They are co-leading this effort in collaboration with the NIH.
• Benetech is revolutionizing how printed books are made accessible for individuals with reading barriers. Conversion of printed books into accessible formats driven by ML and neural processing will be life-changing for the 375 million or more people worldwide with blindness, visual impairment, dyslexia, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers who cannot access 90 percent of the world’s books.
• C4ADS is revolutionizing transparency in the aviation sector by launching the first uncensored flight and aircraft data analytics platform. Icarus Flights empowers journalists and investigators to identify and track aircraft associated with corrupt leaders, perpetrators of human rights abuses and environmental crime, and conflict supply chains.
• Charity Navigator is leveraging ML and AI modeling technologies to identify BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color)-led and founded nonprofits to use in evaluating the diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments of nonprofits, and drive funding to organizations working to serve BIPOC communities.

Although technology alone cannot drive change in some of the world’s most pressing challenges, AWS believes it is a powerful and necessary tool for nonprofits and social good organizations to leverage in accomplishing their missions. A special thank you to all of the nonprofits who invested the time to apply for the Imagine Grant, and we encourage you to apply again next year.

The application cycle for next year’s AWS Imagine Grant will open in June 2021. Stay tuned for some exciting changes to the program and sign up to stay updated by email.

Learn more about the AWS Imagine Grant Program and AWS for nonprofits.