Our Research

Just Futures was formed in response to a strongly articulated desire from our peers for (1) better retirement services for nonprofits and (2) a truly aligned retirement investment portfolio. Learn more about our grounding through our published research.

A Black woman standing in front of a large banner with the names of Black people killed by the police in the year 2020. She is wearing a black shirt, a red scarf tying her hair back and a black face mask with the words "I can't breathe". Her right arm is stretched towards the sky.

“Building a Social Justice Investment Chain”

This landscape scan explores the growing field of social justice investing. This comprises an investment strategy that is deeply aligned with social justice values; is led by social movements and movement actors; builds economic power in Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color; supports community-controlled enterprise; offers non-extractive terms; and is accessible to ordinary people.

This approach to investing is part of a Just Transition to build a financial system that divests from Wall Street and public markets and invests in solidarity economies, rooted in cooperation, redistribution, and repair.

A crowd of women sit in a circle on a field. They are all facing away from the camera with notebooks in their laps. In the center is a small child the age of 3 facing the camera on someone's lap. She has curly brown hair, is wearing overalls, and is smiling at the camera. She has a few front teeth that have grown in.

“Reclaiming Retirement for All”

Read the results of a national needs assessment focused on nonprofit retirement benefits. Over 200+ nonprofits and grassroots organizations contributed insights into how well nonprofits are served by current providers and where major gaps persist. Our findings detail the incredible administrative burden faced by small nonprofits navigating a complex, highly regulated environment and what support is needed from intermediaries and other actors within the nonprofit ecosystem.

As organizations cope with impacts from the Great Resignation or Realignment, we believe that our learnings on how values-aligned retirement benefits can be operationalized within the nonprofit sector have a particular relevance.

We call on funders, intermediaries, organizations, and individuals to join Just Futures in reclaiming retirement for all of us: (1) ensuring all nonprofit and movement workers have equitable access to retirement savings and (2) harnessing the financial power of our savings to further our social impact.