The Plan Sponsor of the Year awards program recognizes those institutions that show a commitment to their participants’ financial health and retirement success. MITRE was named a finalist in the non-profit defined contribution retirement plan category.
MITRE, a not-for-profit with dual headquarters in McLean, Virginia and Bedford, Massachusetts, seeks to solve major public interest problems, for its government customers such as the U.S. Department of Defense and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, through its federally funded research and development centers and public-private partnerships. To do that, it needs to recruit and retain staff with a lot of scientific and high-tech expertise, among other qualifications.
“Our strategy is to emphasize the retirement benefit. Our core (employer) contribution is a ‘shining star’ of our benefits program,” Director, Total Rewards and Wellbeing Phil Abrams says. “We’re a not-for-profit, so we don’t have equity or large bonuses to offer to people.”
MITRE benchmarks its retirement benefit to make sure it’s competitive with not only other nonprofit researchers, but also the corporate employers it competes with for staff. “We offer a significant amount of high-tech-focused services to our sponsors,” Abrams says. “So we need to compete not just with traditional nonprofits: We need to compete with the tech companies.”