Meals on Wheels Durham strengthens fundraising strategy and confidence with Bonterra Que
Overview
Meals on Wheels Durham is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing nutritious meals and meaningful human connection to homebound older adults across Durham County, North Carolina.
Each week, the organization serves roughly 450–500 seniors, delivering freshly prepared meals through a volunteer-driven model that emphasizes both physical nourishment and social connection. While access to healthy food is essential, Meals on Wheels Durham places equal importance on regular check-ins and relationship-building, recognizing that social isolation can negatively affect health and wellbeing as much as poor nutrition.
Customer profile
Product: Bonterra EveryAction with Que Intelligence
Sector: Nonprofit
Vertical: Human services
Supported by a small staff and a large volunteer base, the organization operates in a high-touch, community-centered environment where efficiency, clarity, and trust are critical to sustaining operations and advancing its mission.
The challenge
Meals on Wheels Durham faced growing operational and fundraising complexity during a period of organizational transition.
Over several years, the organization had moved between multiple CRM systems, resulting in fragmented data, duplicate records, and blurred distinctions between meal payments and charitable contributions. Routine tasks such as donor segmentation, reporting, and outreach often required manual workarounds, external spreadsheets, and calendar-based processes to stay on track.
At the same time, the organization was navigating a period of transition within its fundraising function. Fundraising responsibilities extended across roles, placing additional strategic and operational demands on the communications team. While donor communications, acknowledgements, and campaign planning continued, they relied heavily on institutional knowledge and manual execution rather than repeatable, scalable workflows.
Together, these challenges made it difficult to confidently segment donor audiences, maintain clean fundraising data, and plan multi-step campaigns.
Looking ahead, Meals on Wheels Durham needed a way to work more efficiently with the data they already had, regain confidence in their fundraising processes, and support upcoming campaigns without overextending a small team.
I’m not a fundraising person; I’m not a Director of Development. So I needed something that could help me think through strategy and give me confidence that what I was doing made sense.
The solution
To move forward, Meals on Wheels Durham recognized they needed a solution that could support both strategy and execution while working within the systems they already used.
They turned to Bonterra Que, an AI-powered assistant embedded directly within EveryAction. Powered by their own data and Bonterra’s nonprofit expertise, Que doesn’t just offer guidance — it acts within their existing workflows generating assets that could otherwise take hours.
Using Que, the communications team began to shift how work happened day to day:
- Drafting donor emails by sharing parameters around tone, audience, and purpose, then refining and deploying them through targeted workflows
- Receiving step-by-step guidance for building donor segments inside the CRM
- Using structured prompts and checklists to prioritize data cleanup after years of CRM transitions
- Mapping campaign timelines and outreach strategies with a lean fundraising team
Beyond tactical support, Que became a resource the team could rely on across multiple dimensions of their work.
Que also proved especially valuable during moments when staff capacity was stretched.
Rather than replacing human judgment, Que became a creative and strategic partner — helping surface ideas, fill knowledge gaps, and streamline execution while allowing the team to maintain their voice and decision-making authority.
Outcomes
Greater clarity, confidence, and measurable fundraising growth
With EveryAction as their fundraising and donor communications platform and Que embedded into daily workflows, Meals on Wheels Durham has seen meaningful operational improvements alongside stronger fundraising performance.
Between November 1 and January 31, the organization raised more than $257,000, representing a 19% increase over the previous year’s fundraising efforts during the same timeframe.
Beyond the fundraising totals themselves, staff report that the workflows supporting these campaigns have become far more manageable.
Que has also helped the team approach campaign planning and data management with greater clarity.
The organization’s upcoming giving campaign launching in March was also developed with Que’s support, helping the team map out strategy, timelines, and messaging well in advance.
Perhaps most importantly, Que has expanded the capacity of a small team without requiring additional staffing.
Looking ahead
As Meals on Wheels Durham prepares for future campaigns and continued community growth, the team plans to build on this foundation by layering in automation and workflows ensuring personal outreach remains strong without increasing administrative burden.
It gives me confidence that I’m being more strategic and more organized—and that matters when you’re trying to move the mission forward.
For Meals on Wheels Durham, the value of Bonterra Que isn’t about replacing people or automating relationships. It’s about giving a small team the clarity, structure, and confidence to keep moving forward, especially during moments of transition.
By working directly with their data and supporting day-to-day decision-making, Que has helped the team focus less on process and more on purpose.
If your organization is navigating complexity, staffing transitions, or growing expectations with limited time and resources, Bonterra Que can help you make better use of the systems you already have, without losing your voice or your values.
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