Mid-Atlantic Policy Briefing (July 2026)

The Mid-Atlantic chapter's general counsel and government-relations peer working group met at NANA's Washington conference center on July 16, 2026, for the chapter's third-Thursday briefing, held every odd month. Chapter Chair Marcus Idowu opened, with Senior Policy Manager Farah Qureshi-Lindgren covering the two files she tracks directly.

Qureshi-Lindgren briefed the room on lobbying disclosure modernization, a proposed rule that would count grassroots "call to action" emails as lobbying contacts, and what that compliance burden would mean for associations without a dedicated government-relations office. She followed with an update on the federal grant indirect-cost cap, a proposed 10% ceiling on indirect costs for nonprofit grantees that several Mid-Atlantic members with federal grant income were watching closely.

Idowu closed the working-group discussion by asking attendees to flag which of the two files would hit their own association hardest, feeding directly into the policy team's priorities ahead of the Fall Policy Forum. Several general counsel in the room noted that their associations had never separately tracked lobbying hours for grassroots email campaigns, and left with an action item to start.

The briefing ran 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. with breakfast included, free for Mid-Atlantic chapter members, at the National Conference Center ten minutes from Reagan National by Metro.

The briefing is built for general counsel and government-relations staff, though any Mid-Atlantic member with a stake in either file is welcome. The chapter's next briefing follows the odd-month, third-Thursday pattern in September, and Idowu said the working group would return to both files with an update once the comment periods moved. Members who could not attend in person received the same materials by email the following morning.