Explore the journeys of our Amazon Web Services (AWS) IMAGINE Grant recipients as they take their missions to the next level by harnessing the power of the cloud.
The IMAGINE Grant Program is a public grant opportunity open to registered nonprofit organizations who are using cloud technology to accelerate their missions.
Learn more about how the awarded nonprofits, of all sizes and mission areas, take on a diverse set of challenges and unlock potential within their organizations through technology.
From leveraging machine learning to supporting translation efforts for refugees, to storing massive amounts of research to generate cures for childhood cancer, these stories exhibit the ingenuity and possibilities that happen when mission-driven organizations have the right tools.
These are the powerful stories of our past IMAGINE Grant winners
Spend a day in the life of the AWS IMAGINE Grant recipients with our AWS IMAGINE Grant documentary series: Powered By Purpose, a Humanitarian Cloud Journey.
Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation is processing the data of millions of public samples to make them available for childhood cancer researchers.
Kiva needed to develop a systems-change approach to help address the biggest hurdles to financial inclusion. They did so by leveraging emerging technologies to solve this complex problem at scale.
Breastcancer.org is leveraging ML 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.
Tarjimly is using ML for refugees to eliminate language barriers in times of crisis, enabling volunteers to match with refugees who speak their language and dialect.
PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) is building a mobile application to match homeless individuals with housing through a map-based mobile platform leveraging chatbot technology.
Replate is building an mobile application to match surplus food to communities in need in real time.
Urban Institute is building a new API-first local policy data hub to empower policymakers and researchers to be proactive about using data for intelligent policy making.
FamilySearch is using machine learning for handwriting recognition to transcribe genealogically significant historical documents worldwide. Their database currently contains nearly 6 billion digital images, helping individuals make family and heritage discoveries.
GBH is implementing a highly scalable, cloud-based video editing system to transform the way public media delivers educational and inspiring content that fosters citizenship nationwide.
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) is leveraging big data, analytics, visualization, AI, ML, and augmented reality to create a cloud-based registry of data to accelerate cures, prevention, and treatment of Type 1 diabetes.
NatureServe is developing a cutting-edge biodiversity data and analytics solution to map species with high precision, model their habitats, and assess their risk of extinction.
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.
Thomson Reuters Foundation's TrustLaw program is developing a digital platform to connect civil society organizations and social enterprises with pro bono legal support, research, and resources globally to achieve legal and policy reform.
Community Connect Labs is developing new applications and training tools to help nonprofit partners and local governments ensure a fair and accurate 2020 Census.
Ushahidi is developing Kettle, a service to help individuals gain financial resiliency in the face of ongoing climate change disasters.
Code of Support Foundation is developing a tool called PATRIOTlink to improve the search functionality of resources, providing veterans and caregivers with more accurate and faster results for their crucial needs.
Creative Commons is using AWS to improve search and discovery, providing a wide range of content for all types of creators and reusers.
Crohn's & Colitis Foundation is accelerating research towards new treatments and cures for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) by creating a first-of-its-kind data exchange platform, IBD Plexus, providing researchers expedited access to analytic-friendly dataset and bio samples.
The Barnes Foundation is growing its educational mission and expanding its reach to new geographical corners by bringing its arts collection beyond the gallery walls. Their cloud-based mobile app and digital learning platform are pushing the boundaries of what was possible, enabling them to serve a much larger and diverse audience than ever before.
EB Research Partnership is building a cloud-based platform for patients to access and secure all the information and resources required to navigate their medical journey, using epidermolysis bullosa (EB) as a use case and ultimately scaling to benefit the 400 million people battling various kinds of rare diseases.
CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort) is systemically improving disaster relief effort by addressing the need-supply gap: their mobile app, CORE Connect, efficiently connects survivors with critical needs to organizations that are filling those gaps in a timely manner.
Houston Food Bank is leveraging a cloud-based logistics platform to digitize manual processes involved in food deliveries and track operations across a distributed workfoce effectively. This allows them to provide tailored food delivery services from food bank pantries to over a million neighbors in Texas who are food insecure and homebound.
The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) is providing blood cancer care teams with real-time access to clinical outcomes data, helping ensure each patient receives the best treatment path. With their Data Transformation Initiative, NMDP is accelerating data to knowledge to improve patient outcomes, promote health equity and increase survival rate for transplant patients.
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FamilySearch
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GBH
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JDRF
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NatureServe
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Tessitura Network
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Thomson Reuters Foundation
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FamilySearch
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FamilySearch
FamilySearch International is nonprofit organization that began in the 1800s as the Geological Society of Utah. Now, it is a high-tech organization that gathers, digitizes, stores, and publishes billions of genealogical records that enable people to connect with their ancestry.
To process data at this scale, FamilySearch uses AWS machine learning tools for handwriting recognition to expedite the transcription of genealogically significant historical documents worldwide. What was previously a manual process of transcribing handwritten documents in different languages, scripts, and formats is now automated by artificial intelligence.
All of these resources are free and publicly available in service of helping individuals discover more about who they are.
AWS IMAGINE Grant Winner: FamilySearch -
GBH
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GBH
GBH is a public media station based in Boston, MA and the largest producer of content for PBS. From breaking ground on the invention of closed captioning in the 1970s to now leveraging the cloud to edit and produce media, innovating with technology is part of their DNA.
GBH is implementing a highly scalable, cloud-based video editing system for public media organizations to deliver educational, illuminating, and inspiring content from anywhere in the world. By leveraging the ubiquity and convenience of cloud technology, GBH is democratizing access to quality media production, ensuring that the media represents everyone’s voices and perspectives.AWS IMAGINE Grant Winner: GBH -
JDRF
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JDRF
Type One Diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease that renders the body unable to make insulin. T1D affects more than 20 million individuals worldwide, and there is currently no cure. Today, research about T1D lives in siloed, disparate places in mutually incompatible formats across the research and clinical ecosystem, stymieing efforts to find a cure for this disease.
Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) is creating a global Diabetes Data Platform (D2 Platform) that centralizes and harmonizes these data sources in a secure data lake, and democratizes access to the data for researchers, clinicians, and other key diabetes stakeholders to drive actions across the ecosystem for cure(s), prevention and treatment of T1D.
AWS IMAGINE Grant Winner: JDRF -
NatureServe
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NatureServe
Humanity is facing the great sixth extinction right now: species on our planet are becoming extinct hundreds of times higher than the average of the past 10 million years. For over 50 years, NatureServe has leveraged technology, science, and big data to establish a biodiversity observation network, synthesizing species and ecosystem data from more than 100 independent organizations across the Americas.
NatureServe considers itself nature’s technology firm. To enhance their capabilities, they are migrating their data infrastructure — storage, application, and analysis — to the AWS Cloud. This faster, cheaper, and more efficient collection and delivery of data enables NatureServe to help researchers, policymakers, and other land use better leverage data to protect our planet’s rich biodiversity.
AWS IMAGINE Grant Winner: NatureServe -
Tessitura Network
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Tessitura Network
Tessitura Network is a nonprofit member-owned technology firm devoted to advancing the business of arts and culture. Before Tessitura, cultural organizations like theaters, operas, symphonies, and museums relied on many different systems to interact with their beneficiaries, which proved to be confusing, costly, and ineffective.
To help cultural organizations around the world, Tessitura created a centralized technology platform that enables beneficiary touchpoints to happen together in a single place. To do this at scale and support a growing user base, Tessitura needed to migrate their existing on-premises systems to AWS.
Tessitura’s increased capacity to perform better and innovate faster on behalf of its members now directly helps the arts and culture sector survive, adapt, and thrive.
AWS IMAGINE Grant Winner: Tessitura Network -
Thomson Reuters Foundation
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Thomson Reuters Foundation
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social enterprises need legal support to operate, scale into new countries and regions, and achieve policy and legislative change. These resources are often costly and hard to access.
Thomson Reuters Foundation’s TrustLaw program, the world’s largest pro bono legal network, connects lawyers from leading law firms with civil society organizations to facilitate free legal assistance and enable groundbreaking legal research. By redeveloping the TrustLaw service into a world-class digital platform, TrustLaw builds a global community of changemakers fostering knowledge-sharing, learning and innovation, networking, and collaboration.
AWS IMAGINE Grant Winner: Thomson Reuters Foundation
