Tag: AWS Imagine Grant

At re:Invent 2022, AWS announced the winners of this year’s AWS IMAGINE Grant. Winners receive not only unrestricted funding, but also access to training and expert technical guidance. Although they represent diverse mission areas, each organization is committed to innovating with the cloud, using data to fuel their missions, and scaling access to vital services through cloud-enabled, digital tools. Meet this year’s winning nonprofits.

Easterseals, DC MD VA is a multifaceted nonprofit organization with the goal of enriching lives and expanding opportunities for children and adults in the Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) area, including people with disabilities and military backgrounds. With support from our account team at AWS, Easterseals established a data lake to better understand and define the impact our organization has on its participants with the overarching goal of empowering all people to to achieve their potential and live meaningful lives.

Advances in technology are transforming the way health research can be conducted. It is now possible to integrate data from siloed sources into a data lake, a central repository where health data are aggregated and analyzed at scale. Now, more than ever, there are opportunities for collaborative research to accelerate life-saving medical innovation – and that’s exactly what JDRF International, the leading global Type 1 Diabetes research and advocacy organization, is doing with AWS.

Jacaranda Health, a Kenya-based nonprofit organization, is on a mission to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths by deploying low-cost, sustainable solutions that improve the quality of care in government health systems. Jacaranda Health, a recipient of the 2021 AWS IMAGINE Grant award, uses AWS to power a health platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to connect mothers with timely information about pregnancy care, as well as potentially lifesaving advice and referrals to care facilities when it matters most.

Dive into conversations on the AWS Fix This podcast to learn how three AWS IMAGINE Grant winners are using the cloud to make impactful contributions to the planet through building community connections, preserving history, and saving lives.

In 2017, the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) founded the Childhood Cancer Data Lab (Data Lab) to address an important gap in the pediatric cancer field: vast amounts of accumulated data were not being put to use at scale. To address this gap, the Data Lab used AWS to build refine.bio, an openly available collection of normalized bulk gene expression data, to make public datasets interoperable and reusable.

The IMAGINE: Nonprofit conference in Washington, DC brought together leaders, technologists, and mission-driven innovators in the nonprofit sector to learn, connect, and inspire. Over the course of the conference, attendees explored the ways technology helps nonprofits make a positive impact around the world. At the keynote, Dave Levy, vice president of US government, nonprofits, and healthcare at Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Allyson Fryhoff, managing director of nonprofits at AWS, highlighted how nonprofits are on the front lines of addressing some of society’s greatest needs, and how harnessing the power of data can be a force multiplier for change.

AWS is committed to enabling the nonprofit sector with cloud technology tools and nonprofit-specific resources to help them innovate and expand their impact. The AWS IMAGINE Grant is designed to support nonprofits pursuing high-impact, innovative technology projects with vital financial and technical resources. Now in its fifth year, the program offers two distinct award categories for nonprofits to receive support based on their organizational goals and stage of their technology adoption journey. The application is available to download today.

At AWS, we know these are challenging times and we remain committed to supporting nonprofits. This blog post outlines a sampling of programs and resources for nonprofits, including grants and credits, open data access, cloud training, educational events, and more, designed to enable organizations of all sizes to overcome barriers to technology adoption, while enhancing the scale, performance, and capabilities of mission operations.

The nonprofit American Forests is focused on advancing social equity with a national reforestation movement. Trees provide significant benefits against heat related illnesses and climate change, and trees can help advance social equity when they are planted in the neighborhoods that need them the most. But the challenge of achieving Tree Equity across the country is immense. To address this, American Forests is leading a new national campaign through the Tree Equity Score, powered by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud.