C4ADS Named Winner of 2022 Amazon Web Services IMAGINE Grant for Nonprofits

WASHINGTON, DC (December 9, 2022) — C4ADS today announced it has been selected as a winner of the 2022 Amazon Web Services (AWS) IMAGINE Grant, a public grant opportunity open to registered 501(c) nonprofit organizations in the United States who are using technology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. As the digital world continues to change and evolve, C4ADS hopes to use this grant to support our continuous efforts to defeat modern security threats, discover hard-to-find data and help us develop new and innovative ways to utilize Publicly Available Information (PAI).

Now in its fifth year, the AWS IMAGINE Grant program provides vital resources to nonprofit organizations looking to deploy cloud technology as a central tool to achieve mission goals. As part of the program, AWS seeks proposals for big ideas on how to leverage technology in new and innovative ways to accelerate impact in local and global communities.

This year, C4ADS was named a winner in the Go Further, Faster category which recognizes highly innovative projects using advanced cloud services. C4ADS will receive up to $150,000 in unrestricted funding, up to $100,000 in AWS Promotional Credits, and engagement with AWS technical specialists. Proposals were judged on several factors including the innovative and unique nature of the project, impact on mission-critical goals, and clearly defined outcomes and
milestones.

“We are honored to be a recipient of the AWS Imagine Grant Go Further, Faster award for 2023. At C4ADS, we’ve worked with AWS for years to help support the growth of our increasingly complex data infrastructure that supports our analysis. AWS has been an invaluable collaborator of C4ADS, and the Imagine grant award is another exciting phase of this ongoing engagement. With the Imagine Grant funding we will be releasing a new version of our data lake application which houses our vast repository of primary source documentation that supports our research. This funding will enable us to use natural language processing to resolve entities between data sources, improving the discoverability of connections in our data lake system. It will also help to expand our engagement systems in the application, so that we can better support civil society, enforcement, and government partners working to counter illicit networks around the world,” said Patrick Baine, Director of Data and Technology at C4ADS.
Since the launch of the IMAGINE Grant program in 2018, AWS has awarded over $6M in unrestricted funds, AWS Promotional Credits, and AWS training support to 66 nonprofit organizations in support of their technology-driven goals. Previous winners are currently using AWS services to tackle critical challenges such as eliminating barriers to food security, improving maternal health outcomes, helping millions access clean and safe drinking water globally, tackling rare disease research, and more.

“At AWS, we are inspired and encouraged by the nonprofit sector’s commitment to address society’s biggest challenges. Each of our IMAGINE Grant winners is taking innovative approaches to scale their mission impact with technology,” said Allyson Fryhoff, managing director of nonprofit and nonprofit health at AWS. “We’re excited to dive deep with these organizations to help them leverage cloud technology to advance their transformative work
that is benefiting communities worldwide.”

For more information on the AWS IMAGINE Grant, click here.