Spartanburg Academic Movement

The Spartanburg Academic Movement (SAM) is both a nonprofit organization and a community movement founded in 2013. Funded by private and corporate donations and grants, SAM works to ensure Spartanburg County's children and youth reach academic and life success by convening partners, aligning resources, and driving equity.

POSITION Summary:The Advocacy Associate strengthens SAM's advocacy impact by providing research, data analysis, coordination, and execution support of SAM's policy agenda. Reporting to the Director of Advocacy, the Associate helps ensure that SAM's advocacy is grounded in data, informed by policy developments, and reflective of community experience at the local, state, and national levels. The role supports recurring advocacy operations, including policy and legislative trackers, research summaries, and coalition and convening logistics. The role also supports stakeholder follow-up, community feedback synthesis, and draft content for policy briefs, white papers, op-eds, presentations, testimony, and other advocacy communications.

FLSA Classification:Full-Time; Non-Exempt (GRANT FUNDED)

Essential DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:include but are not limited to the following:

Policy Research, Legislative Monitoring, and Data Support

• Conduct assigned policy research across issue areas relevant to SAM's cradle-to-career mission, including education, housing, maternal and child health, workforce, economic mobility, and related systems.
• Collect, monitor, organize, and synthesize local, state, and federal policy developments, legislative activity, public information, and community data for use in advocacy planning and materials.
• Maintain legislative, policy, coalition, engagement, and advocacy trackers aligned with priorities established by the Director of Advocacy and SAM leadership.
• Prepare concise research summaries, policy scans, briefing notes, comparison tables, and background materials that support meetings, campaigns, coalition conversations, and decision-making.
• Coordinate with SAM's Data and Impact team and Center staff to identify available information that can strengthen advocacy analysis and public-facing materials.

Community Engagement and Center Coordination

• Support and attend community programming, focus groups, forums, listening sessions, partner convenings, and coalition meetings connected to advocacy priorities.
• Work with SAM Centers to organize and synthesize feedback from families, youth, educators, employers, service providers, residents, and community partners.
• Identify recurring themes, systemic barriers, policy-practice gaps, and community priorities emerging from engagement activities and elevate them to the Director of Advocacy.
• Help integrate community insight with quantitative and qualitative information to inform community-grounded advocacy recommendations.
• Prepare meeting materials, agendas, notes, action logs, follow-up communications, and stakeholder summaries that strengthen feedback loops and accountability.

Advocacy Campaign and Coalition Support

• Support execution of advocacy campaigns, coalition activities, and approved policy priorities under the direction of the Director of Advocacy.
• Build and maintain campaign templates, workplans, calendars, contact lists, trackers, dashboards, and documentation tools that support coordinated execution.
• Coordinate logistics for meetings, briefings, hearings, advocacy days, presentations, community events, and partner activities, including scheduling, materials, registration, reminders, and follow-up.
• Support coalition and committee operations by maintaining records, monitoring action items, documenting SAM contributions, and tracking shared milestones or outcomes.
• Assist with stakeholder outreach and relationship-management follow-up while ensuring external communications are accurate, timely, and aligned with approved SAM messaging.

Thought Leadership and Advocacy Communications

• Support research, drafting, editing, and formatting for white papers, policy briefs, op-eds, blogs, testimony, issue summaries, talking points, presentations, and outreach materials.
• Collaborate with Communications, Data and Impact, Strategic Philanthropy, Grants, and SAM Centers to gather information, data, stories, and context needed for advocacy products.
• Help translate complex policy and systems information into clear, accessible language for community members, partners, decision-makers, funders, and other audiences.
• Maintain organized source files, citations, background documentation, approvals, and version history for advocacy products.
• Support internal policy updates, advocacy alerts, board-report content, and other recurring communications assigned by the Director of Advocacy.

Operational Coordination and Continuous Improvement

• Maintain an organized advocacy calendar, document library, stakeholder records, campaign files, policy resources, and recurring reporting materials.
• Track deadlines, deliverables, action items, engagement activity, policy milestones, and follow-up responsibilities across assigned advocacy workstreams.
• Prepare routine progress updates and summaries that help the Director of Advocacy assess workload, risks, emerging opportunities, and completion status.
• Participate in reflection and continuous-improvement routines by documenting lessons learned and recommending practical improvements to templates, trackers, communication processes, and engagement workflows.
• Perform otehr related duties as assigned to support SAM's advocacy, public-policy, coalition, community-engagement, and thought-leadership priorities.

EDUCATION AND SKILLS REQUIREMENETS:

• Bachelor's degree in Public Policy, Political Science, Public Administration, Education, Sociology, Communications, Community Development, Human Services, or a related field preferred; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.
• One to two years of experience supporting policy research, advocacy, community engagement, government affairs, coalition work, nonprofit programs, communications, research, or related work preferred.
• Ability to locate, assess, organize, synthesize, and clearly communicate information from policy, legislative, research, government, and community sources.
• Experience supporting meetings, focus groups, forums, campaigns, public events, coalitions, committees, or partner convenings preferred.
• Strong writing and editing skills, with the ability to draft concise summaries, briefs, talking points, presentations, correspondence, and public-facing materials for review.
• Strong organizational skills, including calendar coordination, meeting preparation, tracker maintenance, documentation, deadline follow-up, and management of recurring processes.
• Ability to handle sensitive information with discretion
• Demonstrated ability to communicate professionally with community members, partners, policymakers, volunteers, and SAM colleagues.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office, spreadsheets, shared work-management tools, online research resources, and presentation tools; experience with advocacy or legislative tracking tools preferred.
• Ability to work occasionally early mornings, evenings, or local travel to support community forums, coalition meetings, policy events, or advocacy activities.