Highlights from AWS Nonprofit Generative AI Week 2025

Nonprofits face constant pressure to do more with less. Today, 85,000 organizations worldwide use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help meet that challenge. Increasingly, these organizations are leveraging generative AI to translate educational materials, provide 24/7 cancer support, analyze environmental data, and more.

On October 6–9, 2025, AWS hosted AWS Nonprofit Generative AI Week, a four-day virtual experience for nonprofit professionals across all roles and experience levels. The event explored ethical AI practices, nonprofit-specific use cases, and hands-on implementation guidance. This article summarizes the six featured sessions—and all the content from these sessions is now available on demand.

A common theme: Start small, scale with intent

Across all six sessions, a consistent message was clear: Nonprofits can achieve results without large-scale AI initiatives. Experts recommend beginning with focused, manageable projects to demonstrate value quickly.

“It’s not about chasing shiny tools or doing AI for the sake of it,” said Tanuja Korlepra, chief technology officer of Bonterra. “It’s about figuring out the business problem you’re trying to solve and then going from there.” This sentiment was echoed by Scott Morris, chief technology officer of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). He shared a story about a summer intern who used Amazon SageMaker to develop a complexity scoring system that improved their regulatory review process.

Whether building chatbots or exploring agentic AI, speakers emphasized the importance of proof-of-concept projects, celebrating early wins, and iterative learning.

Session highlights: Learning from nonprofit innovators

The following sessions highlighted real-world implementations from the nonprofit sector. Leaders from education, healthcare, environmental science, and financial services shared how they amplify their missions without massive budgets or large technical staffs.

Session: Getting started with generative AI for nonprofits

AWS solutions architects Rafia Tapia and Fiona McCann introduced core generative AI concepts and their specific impact for nonprofits, covering the basics, benefits, and how to choose the right solutions.

Tapia traced the evolution of generative AI from AI through machine learning and deep learning, explaining how foundation models power today’s tools. Key benefits include efficient content creation, increased productivity, and faster turnaround times. “Something that used to take me a few weeks to write, now it takes me literally hours,” Tapia shared from her own experience.

With so many models available, a common challenge is choosing the right solution. McCann offered this advice: Work backwards from your problem to find a solution that works best for your needs.

Session: Real-world case studies in mission impact

One common theme emerged from the session on real-world case studies in mission impact: Success doesn’t come from leading with the technology—it comes from aligning with the business strategy.

Three nonprofit leaders joined AWS executive industry advisor Kelley Hecht to discuss their generative AI journeys. Rebecca Chandler Leege, CEO of Worldreader, shared how her organization translated its 1,400-book library into multiple languages and created personalized reading activities for families. Miko Santos, senior technical manager of the International Myeloma Foundation, described building Myelo, an AI-powered chatbot that answered 20,000 questions in its early days. Brian McGarvey, co-founder of the Marine Science Foundation, explained how his team uses generative AI to analyze terabytes of underwater acoustic data to assess reef health.

As McGarvey explained, generative AI gives organizations “a virtual set of extra people that you didn’t know you had.”

Session: How to launch AI projects with limited resources

Nonprofit organizations don’t need big staffs, budgets, or data science teams to access the benefits of AI tools. What they need instead is the right partner and to embrace their “why.”

AWS Partners participating in this panel discussion—including Slalom, Protagana, and Bonterra—agreed that mission alignment is key to a successful AI implementation. “Why is AI the tool to solve your problem?” Amy Whittaker from Slalom challenged organizations to ask themselves, “What is our purpose, and is it tied to a key business goal?”

Participants stressed starting small and scaling over time, and dispelled myths about needing large internal teams or significant budgets to begin.

Session: Generative AI use cases for nonprofit financial organizations

NAIC has been on a technological transformation over the past decade, moving from on-premises solutions to the cloud and now to AI. According to Morris, the partnership with AWS has been strategic, with the Generative AI Innovation Center described as a “game changer” in helping with the design and proof of concept for their AI initiatives.

NAIC is building generative AI applications on Amazon Bedrock, a secure and scalable platform. They’ve deployed multiple chatbots to improve employee productivity and are currently working on an AI tool to help regulators achieve faster insurance product filing reviews.

Morris is particularly excited about agentic AI’s future potential. “The primary goal of insurance regulators is to ensure the financial solvency of insurance companies,” he said. “Can we train an agent to help with some of that to get results faster?”

Hands-on technical workshops

Two hands-on workshops demonstrated how to build agentic AI solutions. Attendees learned how accessible agent development has become, whether using Amazon Bedrock’s fully managed platform or building with code using the Strands open-source software development kit (SDK).

Interactive workshop: Build with Bedrock agents

Agentic AI is the next iteration of generative AI, moving beyond responding to prompts to independently making decisions and taking action. Unlike traditional AI that simply answers questions, agentic AI can plan, reason, and execute tasks autonomously to achieve specific goals.

AWS solutions architects Shawn Abdi and Sharyl Ninal demonstrated how to build a Bedrock agent using a fictional investment firm, AnyCompany. The team’s scenario centered on the grind of manually researching companies and missing investment opportunities. With Amazon Bedrock, they showed how the agent could pull answers from reports, summarize documents, and even assemble draft investment portfolios on its own.

The workshop walked through each step of this process, including setting up Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets, enabling the large language model, creating the knowledge base, and connecting everything through AWS Lambda. The demonstration showed how Amazon Bedrock agents are ready to use, featuring built-in tools powered by advanced AI models.

Interactive workshop: Build with Strands Agents API

While Amazon Bedrock provides a fully managed agentic experience, Strands Agents is an open-source API for developers who need complete control and customization. In this advanced Level 300 workshop, AWS senior solutions architects Ivo Janssen and Ben Turnbull demonstrated how Strands Agents allows developers to build agents with minimal code.

“Our primary goal was to lower the barrier of entry for developers and make it easier for them to get started,” Janssen said. Strands Agents is built with three core principles: It’s code-first for developers, reasoning-optimized for workflows, and model-agnostic for flexibility.

Resources and next steps

All six sessions from Nonprofit Generative AI Week 2025 are now available to watch anytime. Review the key takeaways, revisit insightful moments, or share sessions with your team to support practical adoption.

As you review these sessions and consider how generative AI could support your mission, we’ve gathered resources to help you move forward. The Amazon Bedrock documentation offers technical guidance on implementing generative AI solutions, while our getting started guide for nonprofits provides additional resources, programs, and solutions tailored to mission-driven organizations. Eligible nonprofits can also apply for AWS promotional credits through the AWS Nonprofit Credit Program to help offset costs as you experiment and scale your AI initiatives.

Have specific questions about the sessions, or want to start a conversation about deploying generative AI to accelerate your organization’s impact? Connect with our dedicated nonprofit team.

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