By Matt Haller, President and CEO, International Franchise Association

This week, I stood in front of the largest IFA Advocacy Summit crowd in our history — over 600 franchise owners, brand leaders, suppliers, and partners who chose to spend these days in Washington instead of running their businesses back home. Instead of being on the sales floor, in the kitchen, or coaching their teams, they’re here, walking the halls of Congress. That choice is the whole story. Advocacy doesn’t happen from the sidelines. It happens because people show up, and this week, franchising showed up in numbers we’ve never seen before.

Here are the points I wanted every attendee to leave with:

1. This is the biggest Advocacy Summit we’ve ever held — and that scale is the point.

We welcomed 252 first-time attendees this year, alongside franchisees, franchisors, suppliers, and association partners from across the ecosystem. The Multi-Unit Franchising Conference board joined us this week too, along with representatives from franchisee associations and franchise advisory councils across the country. This isn’t one segment of our industry showing up on behalf of everyone else — it’s the whole ecosystem, together, in the same room, telling the same story. That breadth is our leverage. When franchising shows up as one coalition instead of a scattering of individual voices, Washington notices. And when 252 people are walking into these halls for the very first time, it means our movement isn’t just holding steady — it’s growing.

2. Passing the American Franchise Act is the single most important legislative priority in IFA’s history.

For more than a decade, franchised businesses have had to s operate under  joint employer standards that have changed four times in ten years — four different definitions of who’s responsible for what, four different sets of rules to build a business plan around, depending on which administration happens to be in office. That kind of regulatory whiplash doesn’t just create paperwork headaches. It creates a cloud of uncertainty that has cost jobs, slowed growth, and made lenders and investors hesitant to bet on a model that could look completely different in eighteen months. The American Franchise Act ends that. It locks in one clear, franchise-specific standard — not a workaround, not a temporary fix, but a durable answer to a question that has been re-litigated four times too many. It protects nearly 850,000 franchise establishments and the jobs they create in every congressional district in this country. It restores confidence for the lenders, insurers, and investors who need certainty before they’ll commit capital. And it gives every franchise owner in this room the ability to actually plan — to invest in a new location, hire another crew, expand into a new market — without wondering if the rules will change again before the ink dries.

3. This bill already has real, bipartisan momentum — and a four-month window to get it done.

The American Franchise Act has more than 150 bipartisan co-sponsors, and that support crosses party lines in a way that very little else in Washington does right now. We’ve spent two years building toward this exact moment — two years of meetings, data, grassroots organizing, and relationship-building — and we now have roughly four months left in this calendar year to get a bipartisan bill across the finish line. We knew from the outset that this would be a two-year campaign, and we’re in the final stretch of it. There will be plenty of noise this fall about the state of the elections and what that means for the legislative calendar. We can’t control any of that. What we can control is what happens in this building this week: our task is singular — secure a firm commitment to a vote before the end of the year.

4. Relationships — not briefing papers — are what move Congress.

No white paper, no one-pager, no polished slide deck can do what a franchise owner sitting across from their member of Congress can do. I’ve watched members of Congress become champions of this bill for exactly one reason: a franchise owner sat down with them, in their district, and told them, directly, what the business means to their community — the jobs it creates, the tax revenue it generates, the people it employs and serves every single day. No briefing document can replicate that conversation. That’s why the next few days matter so much. It’s not about the volume of meetings — it’s about what happens in each one. Sit across from your member of Congress. Tell them your story. Tell them what your business means to your town, your customers, your employees. Those relationships are built one conversation at a time, and that’s exactly what we’re asking every attendee to do this week.

5. In a moment of record-low trust, small business — and franchising — is the exception.

We’re living through a period where trust in nearly every major institution is at historic lows. Americans don’t trust Washington. They don’t trust big corporations. They don’t trust the media. But Americans still trust small business more than almost any other institution in this country — and that’s exactly what franchising is. Franchising’s whole story is a local business, owned and operated by someone in that community, delivered through a model backed by the strength, systems, and support of a proven brand. It’s local ownership with national backing. Franchise businesses represent nearly 3% of GDP, and yet that story — the local ownership part of it — isn’t always well understood on the Hill. Too often, franchising gets lumped in with big corporations in the public imagination, when the reality is the opposite: it’s hundreds of thousands of individual owners, betting their own capital, hiring their own neighbors, and building something real in their own communities. Closing that understanding gap is our mission this week, and it’s the thread that runs through every conversation we’ll have on the Hill.

We came to Washington in record numbers because the moment demands it. Four months remain to get this bill across the finish line, and every conversation this week — every story shared, every relationship strengthened — moves us closer. Thank you for being here, and thank you for showing up for an industry, and a model, worth protecting.