Pierre Part Belle River Museum Board Members Celeste Gros and Carol Ann Aucoin attended the 2024 Bayou Region Nonprofit Conference hosted by Bayou Community Foundation on, Thursday, August 8th at Fletcher Community College in Schriever, LA.

Over 100 nonprofit leaders from organizations all around our area participated in the conference. The theme of this year’s conference was “Power Tools for Nonprofits”.

Opening keynote speaker was Dr. John LaJaunie, Professor of Finance at Nicholls State University. He spoke on harnessing the power of AI to increase nonprofit effectiveness.

There were two breakout sessions with four speakers so Celeste and Carol Ann divided up in order to hear all four speakers. Celeste’s first speaker was Sarah Cortell Vandersypen who spoke on the “Perfect Pitch” and her second speaker was Monica Sanders who’s session was called “Strategize With Purpose”. Carol Ann’s first speaker was Jill Roshto who spoke on “Empowering Your Nonprofit” and her second speaker was Mandi Cambre who’s topic was “Built to Last: Tools for Fund Development Success”. All speakers shared valuable information in order to make our nonprofit grow into a successful project.

The afternoon keynote speaker was Tanya Scott Harris who touched on “Transforming Togetherness: Building Inclusive Communities”.

The Board Members feel it is imperative for each one of us to be educated on all aspects of developing our nonprofit museum and through various conferences like this one, we strive for success. There are other conferences coming up in the near future and we look forward to various board members attending them and returning to share with others the knowledge they have obtained.

Again, we would like to thank all of our sponsors and community for your continued support. The more we know, the more we succeed.