FINCA will work with AWS to use generative AI and advanced cloud services to enhance its AI-powered knowledge assistant TOK, making institutional knowledge more accessible for staff worldwide.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (December 2, 2025) — FINCA today announced it has been selected as a winner of the 2025 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant, in recognition of its innovative use of technology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. The grant will support FINCA’s efforts to scale its internal AI-powered knowledge assistant TOK (short for “Tree of Knowledge”), improving real-time access to critical organizational knowledge for its international network of nearly 5,000 staff operating across multiple countries and systems. This marks the second year FINCA has received the AWS Imagine Grant, a rare distinction that underscores the organization’s commitment to harnessing ethical and responsible AI to drive operational excellence and social impact.
FINCA was named a winner in the Go Further, Faster category, which recognizes highly innovative projects using advanced cloud services. FINCA will receive $150,000 in unrestricted funding, $15,000 in AWS Credits, and engagement with AWS technical specialists. Awardees were selected based on several factors, including the innovative and unique nature of the project, impact on mission-critical goals, and clearly defined outcomes and milestones.
TOK is an AI-powered chatbot built on Amazon Q for Business and hosted on AWS. It enables FINCA staff to ask complex, natural-language questions and receive real-time, context-specific answers drawn from FINCA’s internal program data, donor insights, field reports, operational dashboards, and more — in seconds, rather than hours or days. The platform incorporates built-in guardrails, explainability tools, and persona management, as well as system prompts to maintain FINCA’s organizational voice, tone, and audience alignment. These capabilities ensure ethical AI use, content transparency, and safe interaction across languages and cultural contexts within a global context.
With the AWS Imagine Grant, FINCA will build on a successful minimum viable product (MVP) launched in April 2025 to expand TOK’s capabilities by integrating generative AI to deliver more accurate, nuanced responses, expand its knowledge base, and improve user experience. The enhanced platform aims to reduce the amount of time FINCA staff spend navigating siloed systems to access critical information, freeing thousands of hours annually for higher-value work. This will allow FINCA to increase its revenue through AI-powered hyper-personalized engagement, gain new supporters through optimized, data-driven outreach, and impact more lives through faster decisions and scalable execution.
“Knowledge is one of FINCA’s most powerful assets, and TOK is transforming how we use it,” said Zeenia Irani, FINCA’s Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives. “Thanks to the AWS Imagine Grant, we can take TOK to the next level — making it smarter, faster, and more intuitive, so our teams can focus on what matters most: delivering impact for the communities we serve.”
“At AWS, we’re continually amazed by the nonprofit sector’s innovative spirit and dedication to creating positive change in our communities and around the globe,” said Rick Buettner, Managing Director of Global Nonprofits at AWS. “Through the Imagine Grant program, we’re seeing organizations embrace cloud technology in ways that fundamentally reshape how they deliver on their missions. From scaling their impact to reaching underserved communities, these nonprofits are showing us what’s possible when vision meets innovation. We’re proud to support their transformative work and help them build solutions that will benefit communities for years to come.”
Since the launch of the Imagine Grant program in 2018, AWS has awarded more than $21 million in unrestricted funding, AWS cloud computing credits, and technical expertise to more than 170 nonprofit organizations. Learn more about past recipients and how nonprofits use AWS to advance their missions around the world at the AWS for nonprofits hub.
Previous winners are currently using AWS services to tackle critical challenges such as improving political transparency, reducing the administrative burden placed on clinicians, accelerating coral reef monitoring, helping millions access clean and safe drinking water globally, tackling rare disease research, and more.
Over 95,000 nonprofit organizations worldwide use AWS to increase their impact and advance mission goals. Through multiple programs tailored specifically to the nonprofit community, AWS enables nonprofits of all sizes to overcome barriers to technology adoption, while enhancing the scale, performance, and capabilities of mission operations.
For more information on the AWS Imagine Grant, visit https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/nonprofits/aws-imagine-grant-program/
