Advocacy Day 2026

The Mid-Atlantic chapter hosted its second Advocacy Day under chapter chair Marcus Idowu at NANA's Washington conference center on April 15, 2026, with 245 members holding 104 Hill meetings by the end of the day — up from 210 members and 96 meetings in 2024. Cobbleridge Broadcast again recorded the morning briefing for members who couldn't travel.

Director of Public Policy Simone Radcliffe opened with the spring's active policy files, then handed the floor to Idowu for the year's new ask: raising the charitable mileage rate for volunteer chapter and board leaders who drive to meetings on their own dime, an issue the Volunteer Mileage Rate Parity file had been building since NANA filed it. Emeka Nwosu-Hart, vice president of government relations at the Coalition of Family Farm Lenders and co-chair of the Mid-Atlantic government-relations working group, led message training built around that single ask rather than a broader policy menu.

Meetings ran in two blocks, grouped by state delegation, with a working-lunch debrief between them. Several delegations reported that staffers were more receptive to a single, concrete mileage-rate number than to the multi-issue briefings of past years.

At the afternoon report-back roundtable, Idowu and Nwosu-Hart collected follow-up questions from committee staff for the policy team to track, without predicting how any pending request would land.

The conference center sits ten minutes from Reagan National by Metro, with shuttle buses running between the venue and Capitol Hill throughout the day. The day closed with a reception at 3:00 p.m.

Advocacy Day draws anyone whose association has a stake in federal policy, not only staff with a government-relations title. Registration closes a month ahead so the policy team can confirm delegation meetings before members travel. Associations that rely on volunteer chapter or regional leaders to represent them are especially encouraged to attend this year, given the mileage-rate ask.