Dancing to a different beat: How Rx Ballroom Dance doubled year-end fundraising with Bonterra Que
Overview
Rx Ballroom Dance is a nonprofit organization that uses ballroom dance as therapy for people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other movement and cognitive disorders. Founded in 2019 by Erin Angelo, a retired professional dancer, the organization has grown from a single class of 20 students to nearly 800 members across Southern California and Michigan, with 14 instructors leading 22 classes per week.
When Erin discovered there were zero ballroom dance therapy programs, despite decades of research proving its effectiveness, she knew she had to build one. “I did what any woman does. When you don’t have something, you make it happen,” she says. Today, Rx Ballroom Dance stands as a rare beacon: the only consistent ballroom dance therapy program globally.
As the organization grew, managing it became increasingly complex. For Erin, a passionate nonprofit leader, not a marketing expert, end-of-year fundraising had become her least favorite time of year. She had the stories. She had the data. What she didn’t have was the strategy to reach the right donors, with the right message, at the right time.
Product: Bonterra Network for Good with Que Intelligence
Sector: Nonprofit
Vertical: Human services
The challenge
Rx Ballroom Dance’s donor database is complex. Program participants (people with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s) are often also donors and members, creating overlapping audience segments that each require different messaging, timing, and asks. Erin knew Bonterra had the tools to segment this data. The problem: she didn’t know how to use them strategically.
It wasn’t that Network for Good or Bonterra didn’t have the tools. It’s just that if you don’t know how to use them, you don’t know what you’re doing.
The result was generic, one-size-fits-all outreach. Erin would send the same message to everyone, including repeat donors who had already given. The frustration was mutual: loyal supporters felt overlooked and annoyed by receiving the same generic message, and Erin knew she wasn’t reaching people with the stories that mattered most.
I hate end-of-year fundraising. It’s the biggest time of the year for us, but if I don’t know how to share it with the right audience — who I’m sharing it with, what message I’m conveying — then it just gets lost. And these incredible stories of these amazing people just fall by the wayside.
The 2024 end-of-year campaign raised $23,000 from donors — decent results, but Erin suspected the approach of sending repetitive, generic messages was leaving both donors and mission impact on the table.
The solution
Bonterra Que had been sitting in Erin’s account for months. She’d dismissed it as just another generic AI tool similar to ChatGPT, which raised data privacy concerns she wasn’t comfortable with. Then, during an overwhelming stretch of 2025 end-of-year prep, she decided to give Que a real try.
She asked Que a simple question: “Help me segment my donor database into meaningful categories for this campaign and show me how to target each one.”
What came back stopped her in her tracks. Que identified four distinct donor groups — past six months, past year, no gift this year, and lapsed for two+ years — and told her exactly how often to contact each segment and what tone to use. It was instantly actionable, grounded in her actual data, and strategic in a way she hadn’t expected from an AI tool.
Moving beyond generic
What struck Erin wasn’t just the segmentation. It was that Que tailored its advice to her specific context. She pushed further: many of her donors are seniors, a demographic that responds poorly to high-pressure asks and prefers simpler language. Que adjusted the entire strategy, keeping copy concise, using a warm tone, and sending at 3 PM when seniors settle in for their afternoon.
The tone, the target demographic, the audience — that was something even two or three years ago you’d have to pay an entire marketing team to figure out. Now it’s just Que.
Equally important: unlike public AI tools, Que operates entirely within Bonterra’s closed system. Donor data stays protected. For a nonprofit leader managing sensitive information, that security was non-negotiable.
From segmentation to strategy
Erin went deeper. When planning a spring Resilience in Motion Gala with a $50,000 goal, she typed one prompt: “Help me segment my donor audience and target them to attend, donate, or sponsor this event.”
In seconds, Que returned a complete picture: high-capacity sponsors, 73 committed regular givers, and a week-by-week workflow through May 9th — layered outreach plans for each segment, suggested ask amounts, ticket sales strategy, and communication timing. The results exceeded expectations: the spring campaign, “Resilience in Motion,” raised $86,686 in total giving, surpassing the $50,000 goal, marking Rx Ballroom Dance’s highest spring campaign ever, and more than doubling the $33,000 raised during the prior year’s spring season.
Within quite literally five seconds, I had an entire workflow. Voilà.
What surprised her most was the major donor strategy. Que drafted approaches bolder than Erin would have written herself, based on individual giving histories, frequency, and amounts. Erin trusted it and sent them anyway. The response was extraordinary.
Que, I trust you, I’m gonna go for it. And I got more response than I ever thought. My whole next couple of weeks were just filled with appointments with major donors.
The impact
The 2025 end-of-year fundraising results were undeniable. Giving increased to $59,800, a direct echo of the strategic segmentation and personalized messaging Que enabled.
| Metric | EOY 2024 | EOY 2025 |
| Total raised | $23,400 | $59,800+ |
| First-time donors | 14% | 25% |
| Average gift | $200 | $400 |
But the numbers tell only part of the story. The real impact came in how Que freed Erin’s time and mindset.
From operations to mission
With Que handling strategic donor segmentation and outreach planning, Erin could delegate routine tasks to her administrative staff. Gala invitations, social media promotion, routine outreach — these moved into the team’s hands. Erin stepped back from the tactical to focus on what she cares about most: the program and the people.
She launched new initiatives like “Your Brain on Art” community events — watercolor classes and museum outings designed to enrich cognitive health through dopamine release. These initiatives would have been impossible if she was still drowning in campaign logistics.
By offloading the administrative and fundraising workload, I can spend more time on programs, training my teachers, utilizing different educational events. I’m able to segment my workflow more meaningfully, more efficiently, and more purposefully.
Storytelling at scale
Que also made sure Erin’s stories reached the people who cared about them. A dancer who couldn’t stand when she first joined now performs on stage. A participant in his 80s, living with advanced Parkinson’s, waltzes across the floor with his wife, both of them mobile and free. These are real people whose lives changed through the program, and Que kept their stories in front of the donors and supporters who make that work possible.
Rx Ballroom Dance is expanding nationally, with programs now active in Michigan. Both the spring Resilience in Motion Showcase and fall gala received funding through the National Endowment for the Arts, a recognition that ballroom dance as neurological therapy is gaining the broader attention it deserves.
As Rx Ballroom grows, so does what Erin believes the organization can take on. The tools and strategies she relied on through 2025 are now part of how she leads, shaping this year’s campaigns and the long-term stability of the nonprofit alike. With clarity, solid data, and Que as a partner, Erin can plan for growth instead of just hoping for it.
Que showed me the potential for growth within my own database that I didn’t see. And that opened a whole new world for me.
