Campaigning for Business

What common trait do all entrepreneurs share? If you ask Todd McCracken, the answer is a willingness to accept risk.

“If you think about what it takes for someone to start a business, these are people with a skill or an idea who say, ‘I can do this on my own,’” says McCracken, the president of the National Small Business Association (NSBA). “Yet to take that leap, you have to feel pretty confident, psychologically, about the future.”

As the head of the NSBA, McCracken advocates for more than 70 million small-business owners and employees across the United States. He works to understand the evolving and varied needs of the small-business community so the risks they have undertaken will prove worthwhile. It is a difficult task, with the NSBA reaching more than 150,000 small businesses.

McCracken says communication is key when dealing with businesses that range in scope from one person to nearly 500 employees, the NSBA cap used for membership purposes. Since his start at the NSBA in 1988, McCracken has come to view diversity within the small-business community, whether in size or nature of the business, as an advantage for the organization. The NSBA is a member-run, member-driven nonprofit.

“One of our key principles is to be nonpartisan,” McCracken says. “We are committed to working with anyone who will help improve the ability of smaller companies to start, grow, and treat employees properly.”

Moreover, McCracken represents the NSBA’s interests before the U.S. Congress. He has testified on a number of issues but primarily regarding affordable and appropriate health care coverage for small business and their employees, regulatory policy, and taxes. Every two years, at the beginning of a new Congress, NSBA holds the Small Business Congress where small-business owners vote on what they consider their priority issues.

In addition to advocating on behalf of the small-business community to politicians, McCracken and the NSBA communicate with their members to ensure they understand what motivates Washington, D.C., and the ways they can impact policy. While they are unable to speak to every member face-to-face, the NSBA hosts conferences where session leaders discuss how to speak with media and make effective points. Online seminars have also proven effective.

“This past summer we put together a toolkit for companies to encourage their member of Congress to visit them,” McCracken says. “A visit helps to build a relationship, create empathy, and shows Congress the needs of small businesses they might not understand if they don’t go and see how they operate firsthand.”

McCracken says there is no greater reward than the success of the small-business community. Although the U.S. saw a decline in the rate of new companies forming in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse, McCracken is enthusiastic about the future of the American business. Part of what makes the U.S. unique, he says, is the country’s entrepreneurial nature and history as a welcoming place for immigrants.

“There is something fundamentally entrepreneurial about a person who comes across the globe to start a new life and will value that and pass it along to their kids,” McCracken says. “If we as a nation begin to lose that sense of entrepreneurial risk-taking tied to our immigrant heritage, then we will begin to look a lot like other countries from a small-business perspective.”

As a first-generation college student from New Mexico, McCracken took a risk of his own when he applied to Trinity. Although few students from his high school went to college, something appealed to McCracken about Trinity’s combination of the “liberal arts with a practicality about the world.” He became an economics major because he thought the field was an interesting way of looking at human behavior and historical trends.

Outside of economics, he was involved in the Coates Center Program Board, forerunner of the Student Programming Board, and chaired the Issue Awareness Committee. He helped start the Soapbox Forum, a weekly event where students debated a chosen topic on the Esplanade. Today, McCracken is a member of Trinity’s Board of Visitors. McCracken and wife, Melissa ’87, live in Arlington, Va., and their elder son, Finlay ’18, is a history and economics double major. 

In his 28th year with the NSBA, McCracken is still excited to come to work each day. To be happy in the advocacy business, he says, you really have to believe in the mission for which you advocate. It is clear that McCracken believes deeply in small business and that this career has been worth the risk.