Traditional Arts Today builds connection and fundraising confidence with Bonterra Network for Good and Que
Overview
Traditional Arts Today is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Ferdinand, Indiana, a small town of roughly 2,200 people in southern Indiana.
Founded by Ann Knebel, a retired federal nurse and scientist, the organization is housed in a historic 1867 home and operates with a dual mission: offering art classes to the community and selling the work of around 40 mostly local artists through an on-site shop and cafe.
From quilting and weaving to stained glass, knitting, intergenerational classes, and kids’ camps, Traditional Arts Today serves over 1,000 community members each year and exists to preserve cultural heritage, give a modern twist to traditional craft, and create gathering spaces in a rural community where opportunities to come together are limited. Their tagline “creating connections” reflects a programmatic response to research showing that social isolation in rural communities can have negative health consequences equivalent to smoking five cigarettes a day.
Customer profile
Product: Bonterra Network for Good with Que Intelligence
Sector: Nonprofit
Vertical: Arts & cultural organizations
The challenge
As a small rural nonprofit, Traditional Arts Today faced the reality every emerging organization knows: fundraising is hard, time-consuming, and easy to get wrong. The team had to be efficient with every hour and every donor relationship to remain sustainable for the long term.
Before adopting a dedicated donor management platform, the team tracked donors using an Excel spreadsheet. There was no day-to-day donor engagement, just four touchpoints a year: two newsletters and two appeals. These engagements required manual exports, building email lists by hand, and merging fields one mailing at a time. Each campaign drained hours of staff capacity.
Beyond the mechanics, leadership recognized a deeper challenge. As Ann put it, “Fundraising is just so time and labor intensive. We want our organization to be sustainable for the long term, and if we’re no good at fundraising, there is no way we’re going to be able to keep going into the future.”
And as a self-described novice fundraiser — a retired scientist and an introvert by nature — Ann needed something more than a database. She needed a system that could surface what mattered, recommend next steps, and help her speak to her board with confidence about where the organization was strong and where it needed to grow.
The solution
Traditional Arts Today’s path to Bonterra began through the Dubois County Community Foundation, which invited the organization into the Jumpstart program offered by Bonterra. Jumpstart funded their access to Network for Good’s donor management system. Over the past year, the team has been steadily implementing the platform and learning how to use its full capabilities through Bonterra’s webinars and coaching.
When Bonterra introduced Que, the AI assistant embedded directly inside Network for Good, Ann was, in her own words, a skeptic. As a former scientist at the National Institutes of Health and a member of an ethics committee, she had real concerns about privacy, data handling, and the responsible use of AI.
What changed her mind was a Bonterra webinar walking through how Que was built. The team’s explanation of how donor data is protected, how information is anonymized for benchmarking, and the thoughtfulness behind the product’s safeguards convinced her to try it.
Que has helped us segment our data, draft emails, and learn how to use Network for Good more effectively. When I don’t know how to do something, I’ll type a question like, ‘Tell me how to do X, Y, Z,’ and Que will tell me how to do it.
Once she did, Que quickly became a working partner across multiple parts of her week. Inside Network for Good, the team now uses Que to:
- Segment donor lists — pulling first-time donors from 2025 for a targeted re-engagement letter, or filtering supporters by giving history for tailored appeals.
- Draft fundraising emails and appeal letters that the team then customizes and sends through Network for Good’s communications tools.
- Generate the annual fundraising report for the board, complete with summarized data, benchmarking against other nonprofits, and recommended priorities.
- Walk through the platform itself — when Ann doesn’t know how to do something in Network for Good, she asks Que, which gives step-by-step, system-specific guidance .
- Benchmark performance against peer organizations on metrics like donor retention, attrition, and recurring giving, help the team see where they are strong and where to focus.
Outcomes
Greater efficiency, stronger end-of-year results, and a confident voice with the board
With Network for Good as the foundation and Que woven into daily fundraising work, Traditional Arts Today saw measurable change both in how the team operates and what they can produce.
The organization’s end-of-year campaign — anchored by a hand-addressed Christmas card mailing that featured “Bob the elf” — was the strongest year-end fundraising effort the organization has ever run, helping them raise over 60% more than previous years. Que helped shape the appeal language in the mailing letter, advised on segmentation strategy for follow-up appeals, and helped sharpen the call to action.
Beyond the campaign itself, the team replaced labor-intensive manual workflows with platform-based ones. Where newsletters used to require downloading spreadsheets, and stitching together email lists, the team can now quickly segment donors, draft communications, and send personalized appeals from a single system.
Some months, Ann estimates Network for Good and Que have saved her roughly 40-50 hours of staff time, compared to the spreadsheet-and-mail-merge days — hours she now reinvests in programs and donor relationships.
Que has also changed how Ann shows up to board meetings. The annual fundraising report, once a heavy lift, now arrives with summarized data, peer benchmarking, and recommended priorities built in. Ann is able to point to specific strengths and to areas for improvement, and to bring concrete recommendations for what to do about each.
That clarity matters most to a small team. There is no separate development director at Traditional Arts Today. The Board volunteers to help with fundraising, but it is up to Ann to lead these efforts. Que has effectively expanded what one person can accomplish, without adding headcount.
Looking ahead
Sustainability remains the focus. Traditional Arts Today plans to keep deepening its use of Network for Good and Que to streamline fundraising and reinvest the time saved into programs that matter most to the community. These include:
- The kids’ summer camp funded by the Mankey Charitable Foundation, which has served hundreds of kids over the life of the program.
- Classes for women in the Dove House recovery program.
- Intergenerational gatherings with the local senior community funded by a local Friends of the Arts organization.
- Collaborations with the Association of Latin Americans in Southern Indiana.
- Partnerships with the town’s leadership to create a mural that tells the story of the community.
The organization also continues to listen to the community, its donors, and the data. As new classes get added, new programs launch, and new donors join, Network for Good and Que will help the team move with intention rather than guesswork.
If your organization is balancing big mission ambitions against limited time and people, Bonterra Network for Good and Que can help you make the most of every donor, every appeal, and every hour.
