Humane World for Animals uses AWS to scale global animal welfare programs

For more than 70 years, Humane World for Animals—formerly called the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International—has been a leader of the animal protection movement, tackling the root causes of animal cruelty and suffering to drive permanent change and create a better world for all animals around the globe. The organization has worked to create a more humane world for animals, helping to pass thousands of landmark laws, rescuing hundreds of thousands of animals, and caring for and protecting millions more.

To address the global challenge of managing street animal populations, Humane World for Animals has developed Humane World Apps, a comprehensive global data management tool designed to improve dog and cat welfare programs by managing spay and neuter, mass vaccination, and access to care operations. With support from the AWS Imagine Grant—a public grant program that provides both cash and Amazon Web Services (AWS) credit funding to registered nonprofit organizations who are using cloud technology to accelerate their missions—Humane World Apps is transforming how large-scale animal welfare programs operate worldwide.

During the beta phase in Vadodara, India, Humane World Apps enabled an 86 percent dog sterilization rate and dog-related complaints decreased by 60 percent after implementing Humane World Apps. This technology aims to facilitate the end of suffering of companion animals by enhancing program effectiveness, supporting public health, and fostering sustainable innovative solutions for reducing human-dog conflict.

In this post, we will discuss how Humane World Apps is revolutionizing animal welfare management through cloud technology and data-driven solutions.

Fragmented data collection in global animal welfare

The scale of the challenge of managing street animal populations is staggering. There are an estimated 700 million to 1 billion dogs worldwide, comprising owned and unowned dogs living in shelters, homes, or freely in urban and rural environments. Estimates suggest there are almost 362 million street cats and dogs across 20 countries, according to a study by MARS. Communities and government agencies—particularly those in countries with developing economies—struggle to find affordable, humane, and accessible solutions to manage dog and cat populations, promote animal welfare, and foster peaceful coexistence between companion animals and people.

Governments are responsible for public health and safety, and many lack concrete solutions and robust, evidence-based programs. In addition, many still resort to euthanizing street animals. Humane and effective sterilization, vaccination, and access to affordable veterinary care are the long-term solutions in improving animal welfare and reducing human-companion animal conflict in places where strays are an issue.

Historically, large-scale dog and cat welfare programs have been plagued by ineffective and fragmented management and data collection. The result has been suboptimal outcomes in managing roaming dog and cat populations and addressing public health concerns.

Building a comprehensive solution on AWS

Humane World Apps’s goal is to offer a unified, high-tech platform that integrates data management for spay and neuter operations, mass vaccination drives, and veterinary care clinics. The application will feature both a mobile app and a web-based interface, offering advanced functionalities tailored to program needs.

The mobile app aims to enable field teams to collect real-time data and record pickup locations for returning dogs to their original sites. The system plans to track the full care cycle, including pre- and post-op care, surgery data, and photo identification for monitoring individual animals and program outcomes. Users can expect the app to manage rabies vaccination programs through geo-fencing, GPS tracking, and automated reporting features.

As Humane World for Animals is a nonprofit organization, the original beta version of the application was created on a limited budget. Some developers were volunteers on the project, and they designed and architected utilizing free or low-cost services. With the support of the AWS Imagine Grant, Humane World for Animals is now in the process of migrating their beta application to AWS services, aiming to unify and simplify their tech stack.

Currently, the app is architected to use a single Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) server that stores the production and staging environments. In addition, there are production and staging database servers which use Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). The app utilizes Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for storage of animal images. As part of the migration process, the organization has started moving to Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), with plans to further leverage AWS tools in the future.

For redundancy, there is an AWS Ohio instance for cold standby. The production and staging environments in Northern Virginia have a Cloudflare CDN layered on top. In the future, that will be migrated to Amazon CloudFront. LucidScale is used to diagram all AWS infrastructure to help staff understand the architecture and can support it moving forward.

Scaling impact through cloud technology

Support from the AWS Imagine Grant is allowing Humane World for Animals to evolve from a scattered tech stack to a more cohesive stack on AWS. This migration from the beta architecture to AWS services is designed to enable global adoption and increased scalability as the team works towards launching the app into production. The project will continue to accelerate the organization’s mission through outcome-based results.

Humane World Apps is in the initial phase of being used in several countries globally, building on the success of its beta phase in India. The beta phase provided robust feedback on the effectiveness of the application, demonstrating how technology can transform animal welfare outcomes when properly implemented and scaled.

The web application serves as an administrative hub where program managers design and oversee operations, provide feedback to the vaccination team, generate reports, and manage data across multiple regions. This centralized approach allows for better coordination and more effective resource allocation across global programs.

Advice for nonprofit technology implementation

Humane World for Animals offers valuable advice for nonprofits starting technology projects. First, they strongly recommend leveraging Amazon’s resources, noting their technical solutions architect’s guidance has been invaluable. Second, they emphasize keeping the end goal in mind—when facing challenges, remember the project’s impact on street dogs’ lives. Finally, they stress the importance of implementing software development lifecycle practices early. Setting up source code control and bug and request prioritization systems before starting is crucial, as doing this mid-project has consumed valuable grant time. While obstacles are inevitable, the team emphasizes that the mission makes overcoming them worthwhile.

Through the AWS Imagine Grant, Humane World for Animals is transforming how animal welfare programs operate globally—creating a more humane world for millions of animals while supporting public health and community safety.

How you can support Humane World for Animals

To learn more about how you can support Humane World for Animals, visit the organization’s website.