Nonprofit organizations face at least four major gaps in engaging with retirement services and are hindered from offering equitable retirements, a study from Just Futures finds.

According to the report, Reclaiming Retirement for All, (55 pages PDF), gaps in capacity, transparency, values, and equity leave many organizations in the nonprofit sector—which employs 12.5 million people, the third largest workforce in the United States—at a disadvantage. Small grassroots nonprofits in particular face a capacity gap, which creates administrative challenges, while a transparency gap is exacerbated by retirement providers with notoriously opaque fee structures that affect nonprofits and their workers. A values gap also challenges social justice organizations and their workers and the retirement providers, which often fail to provide simple, values-aligned investment options. And nonprofits with an equity gap can worsen existing racial and generational wealth gaps by failing to adopt equitable best practices around retirement.

To help address the gaps, the report recommends that nonprofits and the retirement providers recognize the problems and demystify the industry; subsidize a reduction of the burdens on small, grassroots organizations; and organize the industry to meet the needs of the nonprofit sector at every level—from workers making demands on employers and the sector making demands on government.

“More than 12 million American nonprofit workers are poorly served by the retirement services industry, period. But we can reclaim retirement for ourselves and help lessen inequality for all,” said Chitra Aiyar and Just Futures spokesperson Mika Weinstein in a joint statement. “Now is the moment to recognize, subsidize, and organize—to make sure that all nonprofit and movement workers have equitable access to retirement and harness the full power of our savings to further our social impact.”

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