AWS Public Sector Blog

Mike George

Author: Mike George

Mike is a principal solutions architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS) based in Salt Lake City, Utah. He enjoys helping customers solve their technology problems. His interests include software engineering, security, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

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Elevating internal customer support at Thorn with AWS: A generative AI use case

Efficiently addressing internal customer support tickets can profoundly impact an organization’s productivity and employee well-being, apart from their ability to focus on the mission at hand. To meet these demands, many nonprofits, such as Thorn, are turning to innovative technology solutions. In this post, we explore how Thorn used Amazon Web Services (AWS) in conjunction with generative artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize their internal customer support for organization-wide IT, security, and engineering.

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Responsible AI for mission-based organizations

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are transformative technologies, enabling organizations of all sizes to further their mission in ways not previously possible. But, it is critical to think responsibly about these technologies so that all users are treated fairly, data is appropriately protected, and individuals can make informed choices about consent. In this post, we discuss responsible AI and how you should think about your workloads. This approach will help ensure your AI systems are fair, transparent, and secure.

Using machine learning to customize your nonprofit’s direct mailings

Many organizations perform direct mailings, designed to support fundraising or assist with other efforts to help further the organization’s mission. Direct mailing workflows can use everything from a Microsoft Word mail merge to utilizing a third-party mailing provider. By leveraging the power of the cloud, organizations can take advantage of capabilities that might otherwise be out of reach, like customized personalization at scale. In this walkthrough, learn how organizations can utilize machine learning (ML) personalization techniques with AWS to help drive better outcomes on their direct mailing efforts.

Best practices for creating highly available workloads

Many public sector organizations that are moving to the cloud often misunderstand that the architecture of AWS Regions and Availability Zones fundamentally changes how they should think about disaster recovery and resiliency. In this blog post, I share some best practices to answer common questions about building highly available workloads, and share some ways to consider high availability, disaster recovery, and application resiliency within AWS.

Managing nonprofit members and donors with CiviCRM on AWS

Managing donors, members, and constituents is essential to the success of most nonprofits. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, like the no-cost, nonprofit-focused CiviCRM, are an important part of this process. In this post, learn how to deploy CiviCRM using AWS, and explore an architecture for deploying CiviCRM in a way that is highly available and resilient to service disruptions or events.

How nonprofits can automate tax-exempt status across AWS accounts

Many nonprofits and other tax-exempt organizations need to make sure their tax status is correct across their Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts. A new tax analyzer solution automatically detects the tax status of all AWS accounts across an organization. In this blog post, discover how this simple solution identifies which AWS accounts across an organization are paying sales tax, and learn how this solution can quickly remediate tax status by opening an AWS support case automatically.

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Using machine learning to help nonprofits with fundraising activities

Nonprofits can leverage the cloud to reduce the burden associated with their fundraising activities. With machine learning (ML), nonprofits can identify individuals who are more likely to engage and donate to their cause to support their mission. Read more to learn exactly how you can put these solutions into action and leverage ML to help your nonprofit with fundraising efforts. In this post, discover how to use Amazon Personalize to build a ML model that supports a wide-range of personalization experiences—without prior machine learning experience.

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Using AWS to help cultural institutions adapt to a digital world

The humanities—including performing and visual arts—help us understand and interpret the world around us. With the recent pandemic, cultural institutions are challenged as attendance is slowing, funding is diminishing, and programs are being shut down. These cultural institutions must adapt to meet the challenges of this new world. Amazon and AWS have tools to help museums, performing arts centers, and other cultural organizations extend their sphere of influence and increase their engagement with patrons, to remain relevant and better engage audiences in a digital world.

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Five ways nonprofits can reduce the burden associated with fundraising activities

Nonprofits around the world should be able to concentrate on mission-critical activities such as fundraising, instead of focusing on managing their technology infrastructure. Without the burden of worrying about IT, nonprofits can focus on telling their unique stories to drive donations and engagement. Here are five ways that nonprofits can use AWS to accelerate their fundraising.