Grassroots Advocacy Associate

WE ARE

Headquartered in downtown, Washington, DC, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is a nationally recognized and respected organization with over 15,000 attorney members who practice and teach immigration law.  For our membership, we provide advocacy, continuing legal education, practice resources, professional services, and expertise.

Founded in 1946, AILA's mission is to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members.  To learn more about our organization, please visit www.aila.org.

The Government Relations team advocates for immigration-related legislative, regulatory, and policy reforms before Congress and the agencies, consistent with AILA’s principles and priorities.   

YOUR ROLE

As AILA's Grassroots Advocacy Associate you will be a part of the Government Relations team. You will be charged with leading AILA’s grassroots advocacy efforts related to AILA’s advocacy agenda and you will also help set AILA’s membership engagement strategy as it relates to advocacy. In this role you will support, encourage, and develops AILA Chapters’ efforts to strengthen and broaden AILA’s Chapter advocacy initiatives.

YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS

National Day of Action

• Set goals and objectives for AILA’s annual National Day of Action (NDA), our premier advocacy fly-in day. 
• Leads planning and execution of NDA, including overseeing temporary employees and/or consulting companies hired by AILA to help execute NDA.
• Works with AILA Chapters to ensure active membership participation and representation from key districts and states. 
• Mobilizes volunteer chapter organizers, including leading regular conference calls providing resources to ensure successful lobby visits, doing individual outreach and relationship building, and serving as a point of contact.

Grassroots Advocacy Efforts

• Develops and executes a strategic plan for engaging AILA members on priority advocacy issues.
• Develops and executes a ladder of engagement to deepen engagement and reach outlined advocacy goals.
• Develops and executes AILA’s strategy for engaging AILA members, including but not limited to requests for AILA members to email/call their members of Congress, sign online petitions, submit comments on proposed regulations, and policies, meet with Members of Congress.
• Drafts, edits, and sends action alerts, communications with AILA Chapter leaders, and other written work products necessary to execute advocacy efforts and keep members informed.
• Tracks metrics and reports to AILA staff and AILA Chapter leaders on membership engagement participation.
• Works with AILA’s Communications team to ensure advocacy efforts work in concert with the communications strategy and include social media components.

Grassroots Chapter Development 

• Serves as the main point of contact between AILA national and AILA Chapters on advocacy issues. Convenes and leads conference calls on Congressional updates and advocacy initiatives. 
• Mobilizes volunteer advocacy leaders from all chapters to engage with AILA’s national grassroots advocacy efforts. Assists chapters in developing local advocacy strategies.  
• Conducts advocacy trainings around the country, speaking at conferences on the current state-of-play of immigration and how members can become advocates. 
• Identifies, develops, and utilizes tools to strengthen AILA’s membership engagement capacity. 

Other Key Responsibilities

• Maintains AILA’s advocacy Twitter and creates/updates select web pages that are pertinent to grassroots advocacy, membership engagement, and Congressional activity
• Oversees the maintenance of AILA’s advocacy database, and reports to AILA staff and AILA Chapter leaders on membership engagement participation. 

Travel

Travel is required occasionally related to job responsibilities, especially for the annual conference or other association conferences. Participation in the AILA annual conference in June is a job requirement. The annual conference is held in varying cities.

Work Environment/Physical Demands

This job operates in a professional office environment. This job routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets, and fax machines.

This job requires sitting at a desk for extended periods of time and walking and/or standing for extended periods of time throughout the workday, the use of a PC workstation for extended hours, lifting and/or moving up to 25 pounds, and verbal communications with others.

Extended hours, including evenings and weekends.

AAP/EEO Statement:

American Immigration Lawyers Association is an active Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All employment decisions shall be made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, or any other basis as protected by federal, state, or local law.