Building innovative solutions to help nonprofits with fundraising, content delivery, and mission delivery

Nonprofits and cultural institutions need support to serve and deliver impact to our local and global communities. Amazon’s Raise-up Buildathon, presented by Amazon Web Services (AWS), empowered developers, technology enthusiasts, and advocates to build cloud solutions that enhance digital capabilities to help with fundraising, content delivery, and mission delivery. The majority of the winning solutions are available to nonprofits and cultural institutions via open source. Learn more about what these solutions can do, from donor management to augmented reality, to improving how you reach out to constituents to expand your donation stream.

Connect with influencers and sponsors to elevate meaningful causes and drive vital donations

With Cloutvocate, a matchmaking platform, users can sign up as either a nonprofit organization, social media influencer, or corporate sponsor, and then answer a series of questions to determine matches between the users based on their preferences. Nonprofit organizations can “pitch” a campaign idea to influencers to determine if their campaign could be of interest to the influencer. Influencers and corporate sponsors can receive and review the proposal in their dashboard before deciding whether to offer support.

“I only recently knew about AWS Amplify Console, and tried to deploy our Angular app straight from GitLab using AWS Amplify Console. In less than 5 minutes, the app was live, and I didn’t write any code,” said Cloutvocate team member Hendry Irawan.

The Cloutvocate team uses Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Route 53, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon Pay. They deployed the solution using AWS Amplify Console. Learn more by contacting Romeo Radanyi or Kori Skeffington.

Get recommendations of possible donors, company partnerships, suitable volunteers, and similar nonprofits

Gudville uses machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to link organizations with possible donors, company partnerships, suitable volunteers, and similar nonprofits. Gudville assembles information on nonprofits scattered throughout the web from structured data such as Charity Navigator, unstructured data such as news articles, and nonprofits’ Twitter accounts and webpages. With this information, Gudville uses NLP to build a weighted graph that brings nonprofits, companies, and people (Twitter followers) together. It then uses ML to make recommendations for nonprofits.

Gudville uses AWS Lambda, Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2), Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES). Learn more by contacting project leader Priyadarshini Murugan.

Automate volunteer recruiting from social media using machine learning

Voluntree provides automation to the volunteer recruitment workflow from social media. Once connected to a Facebook page, Voluntree analyzes the feed and the page’s inbox. It recognizes users’ interests (from comments and messages) and it connects them with volunteer opportunities aligned with their interests. It initiates data collection, onboards volunteers, and creates accounts in third-party volunteer management software that the nonprofit already uses. It will also answer common questions by learning from the knowledge base that you provide, helping organizations handle repetitive questions.

Voluntree uses Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, Amazon ElastiCache, and Amazon SES. They also leverage high-level services like Amazon RDS and Amazon SNS that automate time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups. Learn more by contacting team leader Mehedi Hasan Masum.

Deliver cultural performances overseas via livestreaming

With LiveKrowd, users can book global artists to perform via private livestreaming. This includes folk or traditional musicians and singers who could livestream from their country to another country. During the livestream performances, the audience can make song requests, song dedications, live chat, and send virtual applause. LiveKrowd cultural artists can talk and interact with the audience while performing, enhancing their knowledge and experience with various musical cultures.

LiveKrowd uses Amazon EC2, Amazon CloudFront, and their elastic capability to handle different traffic peaks. Learn more by contacting LiveKrowd.

Provide augmented reality (AR) tour guides

When planning a museum visit, patrons can download the AR Guide app on their phone, where they can buy ticket days in advance or when they are at the museum, avoiding lines. As soon as the patrons enters the museum building, the AR Guide shows important information, starting with a short tutorial of how to use the app.

The app is designed for the smart glass Google Glass Enterprise 2, which can be rented for a day at the museum. With those glasses, the visitor won’t need the phone and can get all the information in front of their eyes. When the visitor enters the exhibition and looks at the first exhibit, the information automatically appears on the smart glasses. The visitor sees the exhibition piece details as well as additional multimedia like old pictures or videos without the physical limitation of a museum.

AR Guide uses Amazon RDS to store the museum datasets automating time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups. Learn more by contacting creator Daolanto UG or visiting their website.

Showcase and monetize from your museum’s exhibits, no matter where your patrons might be

A typical large museum that shows about 1,000 pieces in its current exhibition typically has 30,000 or more items hidden away in storage. What if visitors could have access to all of that on-demand without needing extra space or that much funding? Enter MuseumSheet, which creates three-dimensional (3D) models from photography submitted by the museum and then displays them in AR on museum floor plans. The app also has a “pop up shop” connecting the patron with relevant items to purchase.

MuseumSheet uses Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, and Amazon Pay to store the museum assets and process the payments for the merchandise and museum sheets. Learn more by contacting the team leader Yosun Chang.

The following nonprofits were awarded honorable mention:

• BrightAct wants to bridge the gap between organizations. The organization streamlines and gathers support for victims of domestic violence. BrightAct is a platform supplier for governments and NGOs with apps for the social protection of constituents and users.
• ConnectAR helps nonprofits raise funds by connecting new and existing users to nonprofit organizations through a social media/augmented reality hybrid platform.
• For-A-Cause provides charities with an avenue of voice-activated donations that would help charities of any size, location, technology, and type.
• Magic Tree is a smart device in the shape of a tree with LEDs installed. A new LED lights up with every donation.

Nonprofits are welcome to reach out to the Amazon Raise-up Buildathon winners to implement the solutions to improve membership and fundraising efforts. Learn more about how cultural institutions can adapt to a digital world and AWS for nonprofits.