How BDPA turned its staff into AI agent builders, starting with a $180K win

A 68-year-old performing arts nonprofit replaced a costly outsourced workflow with an AI agent, and gave their team the skills to keep building.

180k

Annual cost reduction in vendor support

20-30s

Agent runtime per transaction sync

12

Staff trained, 4 build agents independently

The challenge

BD Performing Arts (BDPA) supports 8 touring groups, 165 performers, a 17-vehicle fleet, and over 700 high school bands across 25 states. Running lean meant staff carried hybrid roles across HR, finance, operations, and IT—stitching workflows together with spreadsheets, email, and PDFs.

The biggest pain point: an outside accounting firm charged up to $15,000 a month—roughly $180,000 a year—to record daily transactions for compliance. Staff saw the opportunity to automate, but traditional software approaches would have been too complicated and costly.

The approach

Prowess led a full-day workshop to align on priorities, then built a transaction-tracking agent in 15–20 hours. Staff received 1:1 mentoring and immediately began building prototypes for their own departments.

The solution

Prowess Consulting led a people-centered path to agentic AI:

Discovery workshop with HR, finance, IT, and operations mapped key processes and identified bingo transaction tracking as the highest-ROI starting point.

Tools that fit the team: Google Gemini paired with n8n—accessible to non-technical staff, powerful enough for IT, and compatible with BDPA’s existing Google Workspace.

Built together: Prowess developed the transaction tracking agent in 15–20 hours while mentoring staff one-on-one. One manager completed a recurring multi-hour task in 30 seconds on his first prompt after the workshop.

Handed off for ownership: BDPA staff refined the agent, tested variations, and went on to build their own automations across IT ticketing, subscriptions, HR, and operations.

What changed

Daily bingo transaction tracking automated end-to-end — eliminating a $180K/year outsourcing cost
IT extended the agent to cover ticketing and recurring subscription workflows
HR and operations staff built working prototypes after just two 1:1 sessions
One manager completed a multi-hour recurring task in 30 seconds with his first prompt
The organization now has an internal, scalable model for continuous AI-driven improvement

“After the workshop, I built my first agent in under an hour. I didn’t need a technical background or hand-holding. The training made it feel doable and even fun.”

– Lainey Braatz, Senior Administrator, BDPA

The results

$180K in projected annual cost reduction
20–30 second runtime for the transaction tracking agent
12 staff trained, with 4 build agents independently
Working prototypes created on day one

Beyond the numbers, BDPA gained something more durable: a shared approach to automation and a team that can build on its own.

What’s next

BDPA is expanding the transaction tracking agent production capabilities and continuing to develop department-level agents across HR, IT, and operations driven by internal staff.