For the next six weeks, Members of Congress will be spending most of their time away from Washington, back in their districts. This period represents an outstanding opportunity—particularly during an election year—to spend time with these officials and give them a meaningful look at small business reality.
We find that members of Congress (and Congressional candidates) often welcome the opportunity to visit local businesses and learn about their operations, challenges, and concerns. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to consider inviting members of your local Congressional delegation to visit your business this summer and talk with you, your employees, your customers, and your neighboring businesses. While these visits usually work best when they are not overtly political, they nevertheless represent an opportunity to talk about key small business issues.
We hope that you will strongly consider participating in this effort. To assist you, we have put together a web-based toolkit, which will walk you step-by-step through the invitation, the meeting itself, and the post-visit follow-up. To access this information, please register by clicking here and you will then be directed to the toolkit.
While we believe that the visit will be most beneficial if it focuses on your business—its history, growth, and challenges, as well as the leadership role that you play within your local community—it would be most helpful to the small business cause if you could present your guest with a copy of NSBA’s priority issues, and ask the candidates to sign our Small Business Pledge, which asks them to support small business concerns as a priority in Congress. Both of these documents are part of the toolkit mentioned above.
While we hope we have delivered to you a turn-key package, please do not hesitate to contact us with questions, suggestions, and feedback. I hope that this opportunity is as rewarding and productive as I think it will be.
Thank you in advance for helping to carry the small business message.
Sincerely,
Todd McCracken
President and CEO
National Small Business Association
America's Small Business Advocate