Save the Date: AWS Imagine for Nonprofits Conference 2025 | Learn how purposeful application of technology can advance social and environmental impact
Grants for nonprofits
Our goal is to empower nonprofit organizations to prioritize technology as a mission-critical component of their projects by providing support for organizations pursuing technology-driven goals. As part of the program, we are seeking proposals for pilot projects, proofs of concept, or existing programs that utilize technology in a new or expanded way.
AWS IMAGINE Grant in the U.S.
AWS IMAGINE Grant offers three distinct award categories for 501 (c) nonprofits based in the United States to receive support based on their organizational goals and the stage in their technology adoption journeys.
The Pathfinder – Generative AI Award
The Pathfinder — Generative AI award will provide support for a highly innovative, mission-critical project that leverages generative AI. This project will have the potential to produce a scaled, repeatable solution that directly accelerates mission achievement and may impact an entire industry or field. Projects in the Pathfinder category may include service types mentioned in the Go Further, Faster and Momentum to Modernize awards, but must include the use of generative AI as a required additional workload. Pathfinder projects must be building on existing data strategy and foundation, and the generative AI use case is already defined with implementation in the planning phase (or later).
Award package includes:
- Up to $200,000 USD of unrestricted financial support
- Up to $100,000 USD in AWS Promotional Credit
- Project implementation support from the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center
- Access to AWS training and support
- An opportunity for AWS marketing promotion
The Go Further, Faster Award
The Go Further, Faster award will provide support for highly innovative projects that leverage the cloud. These projects will have the potential to produce scaled, repeatable solutions and may impact an entire industry or field. They will be force multipliers for organizations and will include the application of and/or seek integrations with advanced cloud services, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), high performance computing (HPC), Internet of Things (IoT), and more.
Award package includes:
- Up to $150,000 USD of unrestricted financial support
- Up to $100,000 USD in AWS Promotional Credit
- Project implementation guidance from AWS technical specialist(s)
- Access to AWS training and support
- An opportunity for AWS marketing promotion
The Momentum to Modernize Award
As nonprofit organizations seek to transform and enhance their core mission operations with technology, many organizations need funding for foundational technology projects, such as migrating servers to the cloud and modernizing new and existing applications. The Momentum to Modernize award will provide funding for these transformational infrastructure projects, alongside AWS Promotional Credit and implementation support. Nonprofit organizations with specific workloads and outcomes that meet the program criteria are welcome to apply. Projects may include application migration and optimization, net-new application development, database migration and centralization, infrastructure expansion, and more.
Award package includes:
- Up to $50,000 USD of unrestricted financial support
- Up to $20,000 USD in AWS Promotional Credit
- Project implementation guidance from AWS technical specialist(s)
- Access to AWS training and support
- An opportunity for AWS marketing promotion
The 2024-2025 AWS IMAGINE Grant recipients
The Pathfinder - Generative AI award
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is developing the first-ever generative AI suite of tools for nature-based science to bring conservation data to life — dynamically extracting and summarizing scientific literature so that researchers, and citizen scientists, can put that data into action in support of our planet.
Baptist Health South Florida is developing a patient cohort retrieval application using advanced technologies, including generative AI and information retrieval techniques. This application, powered by large language models, will identify and retrieve patient cohorts from both structured and unstructured EHR data. The system aims to enhance clinical decision-making, optimize resource use, and advance personalized care across their entire health system.
RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is using AWS Generative AI to create on-demand crisis hotlines and additional support mediums. This solution will integrate RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline directly into social media, gaming, and social networking sites. By doing so, RAINN aims to expedite access to trauma-informed support and resources for sexual violence survivors of all ages, delivering critical interventions where people already communicate.
The Lieber Institute for Brain Development is using generative AI to design new medications for complex diseases like schizophrenia. Their approach aims to correct abnormal gene expression patterns using advanced techniques such as diffusion models and reinforcement learning. By leveraging their extensive brain research data, they seek to overcome major drug design challenges in psychiatry and broader healthcare.
Candid is developing an AI assistant to help nonprofit staff and fundraisers access vital funding data, learning resources, and research. This tool will unify Candid's extensive multimedia resources, enabling users to quickly find relevant, location-specific content to improve and scale their work, benefiting the entire nonprofit sector.
The Go Further, Faster award
Vision Ireland is developing a vision assistant tool that leverages generative AI to provide detailed image descriptions to the blind and visually impaired community, enabling users to independently access and interpret visual information, enhancing beneficiaries interactions, independence, and participation in various aspects of life.
Mental Health Innovations is uniting its extensive data repositories to establish the UK's largest community mental health dataset, derived from the Shout text messaging support service and The Mix's online resource platform for young people. By applying analytics to this comprehensive anonymised collection, they aim to generate actionable insights that will help enhance support services and deepen the understanding of mental health trends nationwide.
Kent Wildlife Trust, in collaboration with Buglife, are expanding their Bugs Matter citizen science app globally to collect invaluable long-term, large-scale data on insect populations, climate change impacts, and habitats. This will aid in understanding the biodiversity crisis, engage the public in conservation, and work towards a vision of humans coexisting with thriving wildlife.
STOP THE TRAFFIK is enhancing their Traffik Analysis Hub, the worlds largest accessible set of information on human trafficking. This will increase the quality and accuracy of the data points, expand language capabilities and integrate open-source datasets in order to drive action, inspire collaboration, and combat modern slavery and human trafficking.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is revamping their data architecture to boost donation revenue and fund health equity initiatives, especially in underserved communities. This digital transformation will unify data sources and use AI/ML to understand constituent behavior, enhance experiences, and develop effective fundraising strategies.
CUES is creating a cutting-edge personalized learning platform tailored to the unique needs of credit union leaders. By using advanced data analytics and AI, the platform delivers customized content to support leadership development, career growth, and deeper member engagement. By providing valuable business insights, it also helps leaders to drive meaningful progress in their organizations.
Geisinger Genomics is integrating population-scale genomic information into routine healthcare and democratizing the use of that data in precision health research. This integration will help to realize the potential of genomic information across the continuum of care, enabling more personalized and effective treatments for patients.
The National Audubon Society is developing a suite of AI, ML, and LLM-powered tools for integration with their mobile app. These tools aim to make bird identification by sight, sound, or photo easier and more enjoyable for a wider audience. By providing these resources, Audubon hopes to empower a new generation of birders who can contribute valuable data on the birds they see. This data will support Audubon’s mission to protect birds and their habitats, both now and in the future.
OpenSecrets is using machine learning to enhance its political contribution database, revolutionizing donor matching accuracy and efficiency. This automated process overcomes data inconsistencies, providing partners with valuable insights into money's influence in politics.
United Ways of California is supercharging California’s 2-1-1 resource and referral centers using Generative AI. By applying this technology, 2-1-1s specialists are more informed and efficient, connecting people with urgent needs rapidly to resources, and California is more prepared to respond to disasters like fires, floods, and earthquakes.
Wildlife Conservation Society is developing MERMAID (Marine Ecological Research Management AID), an AWS-powered machine learning and open data infrastructure to help scientists and citizen divers quickly analyze coral reef health from underwater images. This effort aims to close the coral reef data gap, supporting 100 governments in identifying and protecting the most climate-resilient reefs worldwide.
HSR.health is enhancing 'Anna,' a health-focused AI orchestrator. Anna integrates generative AI, advanced data science, and geospatial intelligence into a conversational interface. This tool revolutionizes access to critical health risk insights, uncovers hidden risks, and empowers decision-makers to preemptively address health crises and mitigate economic disruptions across industries.
SSM Health Care Group is developing SmartECHO, an algorithm aimed at advancing cardiac imaging by improving quality, workflow, and communication. Although ECHO technology can now provide comprehensive cardiac profiles, its clinical application has not kept pace with these advancements. SmartECHO intends to bridge this gap between technological capability and practical implementation.
Earth Genome is creating an AI-powered platform to allow anyone, anywhere to monitor the state of the environment using satellite imagery. By integrating generative AI, remote sensing foundation models, and petabyte-scale imagery, the platform empowers journalists, indigenous peoples, and local stakeholders to quickly and accurately locate, monitor, and expose illegal logging, mining, and other emergent environmental threats.
WestCare is confronting the urgent challenges of the behavioral health industry, including escalating substance use disorders, opioid and fentanyl epidemics, workforce shortages, and rising mental health needs. By integrating AWS AI and DevOps into their Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform, they aim to reduce administrative burdens in order to create more time for behavioral health professionals to focus on delivering life-saving care.
The YMCA of Greater New York is developing a web-based platform with modern frontend technologies and microservice architecture to optimize swim instruction tracking. This YMCA Swim Tracker will use AI/ML to predict trends, classify swimmer and instructor needs, and recommend personalized experiences. The goal is to help New Yorkers learn life-saving swimming skills more efficiently, enhancing water safety.
Relief International (RI) is working to automate the digitization of handwritten health records in South Sudan, enabling health facilities to quickly capture, analyze, and act on critical data. This innovative solution will enhance disease monitoring and treatment protocols for refugee and displaced communities, driving faster, data-driven healthcare decisions.
Connecting for Better Health’s (C4BH) Community Sandbox enables simulated data exchange in a secure cloud environment, where organizations can readily identify, test, validate, and share strategies. The Community Sandbox aims to increase data quality, promote transparency among, and across social and health systems, and replace laborious, point-to-point testing and troubleshooting with an always-learning, agile testing network.
The Rainforest Alliance is developing an AI-powered system to accelerate the adoption of regenerative agriculture and sustainable landscape management practices globally. This multilingual, app-based platform will use simple 'show me, tell me' interfaces to support farmers on their sustainability journey in their local languages. It will help farmers easily understand and interact with the information, providing them with data and associated recommendations.
The Legal Aid Society of Westchester County created the AWS Public Defense System (AWS-PDS) which is deployed to create client files and then classify, itemize, and simplify the torrent of information, empowering the public defender to not only quickly and efficiently understand the discovery but also to use it effectively for plea negotiations, trials and preventing wrongful convictions. Knowledge is power. In our communities, AWS-PDFS ensures that the mandated defense providers have the tools to identify and confront the injustices of our justice system through cutting-edge data management.
The Momentum to Modernize award
American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) is building a data lake and adding analytics capabilities to drive data governance, insights, and analytics. By elevating the visibility of their data, ASCP will be able to expediting decisions that will improve patient care across the globe.
The Institute for Systems Biology is building a cloud-based digital twin of the human gut microbiome to predict personalized responses to dietary and probiotic interventions. They aim to make this innovative tool accessible to individuals and healthcare providers to improve health outcomes for patients.
The Saint Louis Zoo Association is using advanced media intelligence to analyze wildlife behavior videos, promoting collaborative research and education. This addresses scientists' need for larger datasets, overcoming limitations of small animal populations in individual zoos and the high costs of multi-zoo studies. The initiative aims to enhance both scientific research and public understanding of wildlife.
Volunteers of America is planning to integrate their data with Amazon Q and QuickSight to empower business intelligence capabilities for staff. With this, employees can gain insights more rapidly by using natural language and thus democratizing data for everyone and improving productivity.
Med Center Health (MCH) is creating a disaster recovery plan to maintain business continuity during natural or man-made disasters. This will ensure the nonprofit hospital system can maintain continuity of care and increase patient safety for individuals in the ten counties it serves.
Humane Society of the United States is developing HSIApps, a global data management tool designed to improve dog and cat welfare programs by managing spay/neuter, mass vaccinations, and access to care operations. This technology facilitates ending the suffering of companion animals by enhancing program effectiveness, supporting public health and fostering sustainable innovative solutions for reducing human-dog conflict.
Challenger Center for Space Science Education is transitioning to cloud-based services for its interactive STEM adventures. This move will improve operational efficiency, enhance cybersecurity, expand analytics capabilities, and enable regular software updates. As a result, Challenger Learning Centers will more effectively inspire students nationwide to pursue STEM fields.
National Committee for Quality Assurance plans to leverage AWS Clean Rooms to securely access real world patient data for the purposes of developing digital health care quality measures. By combining this data, sophisticated analytics, and machine learning, NCQA will be able to better predict patient outcomes and impacts to care quality.
The Urban Institute is leveraging AWS’s advanced cloud technology to modernize its suite of microsimulation models, addressing common challenges and accelerating the research-to-delivery process.
Easterseals Southern California (ESSC) aims to transform disability and community services using an AWS-powered, AI/ML data insights hub to analyze the nation's largest private nonprofit disability services dataset to uncover solutions that improve outcomes for ESSC's 19,000+ participants and the 61 million Americans living with disabilities.
Explore additional AWS IMAGINE grants and awards
The AWS IMAGINE Grant program also offers the AWS IMAGINE Grant in the U.K and Ireland, and the AWS IMAGINE Grant Children's Health Innovation Award
AWS IMAGINE Grant in the U.K. & Ireland
AWS IMAGINE Grant Children’s Health Innovation Award
“Thanks to the critical support that AWS is providing us with, we're able to truly transform our platform into a digital ecosystem.”
Carolina Henriquez-Schmitz
TrustLaw Director, Thomson Reuters Foundation
“We're now going to be able to incorporate community science data, acoustic data, remote sensing data, and all kinds of other information into one database, with the help of AWS to allow us to make the best decisions for the conservation of nature.”
Sean O'Brien
CEO, NatureServe
“Working with AWS and creating a dataset that is global, that is pulling from research from the best people all over the world, will accelerate life changing breakthroughs to cure, prevent, and better treat type one diabetes.”
Aaron Kowalski
CEO, JDRF
“This collaboration will improve identification of suicide risk, expand services targeted to that risk, support risk reassessment, and improve identification in downward trends in client suicidality. AWS is playing a tangible role in life-saving work with one of the most underserved communities in the mental health arena.”
Chris Ford
CEO, Stop Solider Suicide
“The process of applying for the IMAGINE Grant helped our teams think about our solution to meet the needs of breast cancer patients in a new way and ultimately emerge with clearer thinking. Thanks to the resources and support provided by AWS, we have had early success in developing a recommendation tool that will leverage AWS machine learning technology to help people affected by breast cancer find credible information, empowering them to make important choices for their health based on their unique cancer situation.”
Hope Wohl
CEO, Breastcancer.org
The application cycle for the 2024 AWS IMAGINE Grant is now closed
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