Imagine Grant nonprofit organization winners announced

Finding cures for childhood cancer. Stopping illegal fuel dumping in our oceans. Sharing knowledge and culture. Giving unbanked populations a financial voice. Guiding women facing life-threatening breast cancer diagnoses. Helping veterans access the support they’ve earned. This year’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant Program winners are tackling big challenges using technology.

At AWS, we value our nonprofit innovators. We believe that powerful technology combined with the talents and passions of individuals within nonprofit organizations is key to solving some of the world’s toughest challenges. The AWS Imagine Grant provides vital resources to organizations looking to deploy technology as a central tool to achieve their missions. AWS provides grant winners financial and operational support including AWS Promotional Credits, training services, marketing support, and more.

Although the mission areas and projects proposed by our winners are varied, their passion and drive to produce impact is the same. The 2019 winners are:

• Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation is using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services on AWS to expand the capabilities of their Childhood Cancer Data Lab. They will build out their refine.bio product, which gives childhood cancer researchers access to over 1,250,000 genomic samples, with rich, AI-based annotations to help ultimately find a cure for childhood cancers.
• Breastcancer.org is building a digital solution to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people with breast cancer by delivering a technology-enabled solution that delivers the right information at the right time, based on a person’s health records. This personalized solution reduces the risk of misinformation and missed opportunities for the best possible health outcomes.
• Creative Commons is expanding the capabilities of Creative Commons Search (CC Search) to include image recognition and ML to enhance the metadata of openly licensed content and apply AI image analysis to generate new metadata for use in their search algorithm. CC Search will drive greater use of openly licensed content and public domain works.
• Code of Support Foundation is helping the military and veteran community access resources faster and more reliably through their newly expanded cloud-based database, PATRIOTlink®. The database matches service members, veterans, and their families with the thousands of programs available, to include mental health, education, employment, financial, housing, and legal services.
• Kiva is launching a digital identity and credit reporting platform – Kiva Protocol – to provide the world’s 1.7 billion unbanked to access the formal financial system. With a reference implementation underway in Sierra Leone, Kiva is now working with governments around the world to leverage this foundational, human-centric technology infrastructure to advance financial inclusion.
• SkyTruth is using ML algorithms to analyze images that detect bilge dumping around the world. The analysis will be aggregated in a database that will then inform governments, activists, researchers, journalists, businesses, and more about this illegal practice, to ultimately stop oil pollution at sea.

We are also happy to announce the four runner-ups for the Imagine Grant, who will also receive AWS support: Atma Connect, Epilepsy Foundation, Upsolve, and World Resources Institute.

We appreciate the hard work of all of this year’s applicants. The application cycle for next year’s AWS Imagine Grant will open in June 2020. Learn more about the AWS Imagine Grant Program and AWS for nonprofits. Check out the Imagine Grant documentary series which captured the stories of past winners and how they’ve used the grant support to take their organizations to the next level by harnessing the power of the cloud. Watch the videos of the 2018 Imagine Grant winners including Community Connect Labs, PATH, Replate, Tarjimly, Urban Institute, and Ushahidi.