Most Nonprofit Retirement Benefit Plans Under 'Stress,' Report Finds

"Retirement benefits are especially important for nonprofit organizations because they offer a way to help offset the generally lower wages paid to nonprofit workers," said Lester M. Salamon, the report's author and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. "But, given the Pension Protection Act of 2006's requirement that defined benefit plans have assets in place to cover the full cost of their outstanding benefit obligations, the recent economic crisis, by decimating the value of pension assets, has provoked a crisis for the thousands of nonprofits that offer such plans."