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About

NASRA was founded in 1955, which is when it held its first conference in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1956, W. Frank DeLamar was elected the first president, and the now annual summer meeting was in his home state of Georgia. (Mr. DeLamar was also the inaugural director of the Employees' Retirement System of Georgia, which was created by an act of the state's 1949 General Assembly.)

In the first 61 years, NASRA adopted three different logos, each of which included a polygon. The original logo used an equilateral triangle with the words “for the members, for the systems, for the taxpayers.” In the late 1980s, NASRA added a Celtic knot to symbolize shared community and strength. In 2015, the current logo was introduced, simplifying the design by using the polygon shapes to convey movement and connectivity.

 

Today, NASRA is a non-profit association whose members are the directors of the nation's state, territorial, and largest statewide public retirement systems. NASRA members oversee retirement systems that hold more than two-thirds of the over $6.0 trillion held in trust for nearly 15 million working and 11 million retired employees of state and local government.

Mission:

To serve the members of the National Association of State Retirement Administrators in managing sustainable public employee retirement systems through research, education, and collaboration.

Core values:

Integrity
Professionalism
Credibility
Collaboration
Transparency


Become A Member

Becoming a member of NASRA offers a unique opportunity to join a community committed to the sound, efficient, and innovative stewardship of public retirement systems. Membership connects you with a network of professionals and experts, providing valuable insights into managing public retirement systems with a focus on sustainability and risk-averse strategies.

By joining NASRA, you gain the tools and resources to enhance the management of public retirement systems, ensuring their long-term success and reliability for generations to come.

What's New at NASRA: Government Spending Issue Brief

NASRA’s March 2026 update on government spending makes a basic but important point: public pension benefits are not paid out of a government’s day-to-day operating budget. They are paid from trust funds that employees and employers contribute to during an employee’s working years. Those trusts distribute more than $400 billion each year to retirees and beneficiaries in communities across the country. On a national basis, employer contributions to pension trusts in FY 2023 equaled 5.16 percent of direct general spending by state and local governments, which shows that pension contributions remain a limited share of overall public spending even though the level varies from one state to another. 
The brief also shows that pension costs should be viewed in the context of the changes governments have made over the past 15 years to strengthen plan funding. Following the 2008–09 market decline, nearly every state and many local governments adjusted contributions, benefits, or both to improve pension sustainability. More recent data show that employer contributions increased from FY 2022 to FY 2023, but pension spending as a share of total government spending remained broadly stable. The updated brief provides FY 2023 figures and also projects the aggregate pension spending rate for FY 2024, offering a useful snapshot of both current costs and the longer funding trend.