EthosOne joins ASBA as Risk and Compliance Branch Partner for 2026

Adelaide, 26 May 2026

The announcement

EthosOne is now the Risk and Compliance Branch Partner for the Association of School Business Administrators (ASBA) for the remainder of 2026.

ASBA is the peak national body for school business administrators in Australia's independent school sector. Its Risk and Compliance Branch is the community within ASBA where members navigating governance, risk and compliance obligations meet, learn and share practice.

A Branch Partner sponsors that community for the year. The arrangement is a commercial sponsorship, not an endorsement. We are joining the conversation, contributing to the Resource Library, and showing up at branch events because the work this community is doing is exactly the work EthosOne was built to support.

We are proud to be in the role.

Why we are joining

ASBA represents some of the most operationally rigorous business managers in the country. Risk, compliance and governance sit at the heart of what they navigate every day, and the volume and complexity of obligations landing on independent schools is only increasing.

For the last 18 months, the same observation has been coming back to us from school leaders. The sector has outgrown the tools it was handed. Spreadsheets, shared drives and PDFs are not holding up under the load. The work has changed. The infrastructure has not kept pace.

Two things have shifted in 2026 that make this moment different from every other "we need better systems" conversation of the past decade.

The first is purpose-built infrastructure. EthosOne was built specifically for the governance, risk and compliance needs of independent schools. Not adapted down from corporate GRC platforms designed for ASX-listed companies. Not stretched up from generic policy libraries. Built for the way a school actually runs, with the obligations a school actually carries, in language a board actually understands.

The second is AI. The cost of producing high-quality governance work has fallen by an order of magnitude in less than two years. Policy drafts that used to take a week now take minutes. Risk registers that used to be quarterly exercises can maintain themselves between formal reviews. Board papers can be assembled from live evidence rather than reconstructed from memory the weekend before the meeting. The principles of good governance have not changed. The tools have changed completely.

Joining the ASBA R&C Branch as Partner puts EthosOne inside the community that will most acutely feel both of those shifts in 2026.

What we are contributing

Through the remainder of 2026, EthosOne is contributing to the ASBA R&C community across three concrete areas, in line with the partnership terms.

1. Content for the RC Resource Library

We will be contributing resources to the branch library through 2026, drawn from what we are learning across our customer base. Frameworks for compliance calendar design. Templates for board reporting that work for both founder-led and federation school structures. The patterns we are seeing in how schools are restructuring the BM role as AI takes routine work off the desk.

2. Presence at branch events

Two EthosOne representatives will attend branch online and face-to-face events through the year. Our intent is to listen first. The most useful conversations happen at the level of practice, not pitch.

3. A clear point of view on AI-assisted governance

The AI conversation in schools has been largely captured by a classroom-level debate about student cheating. That is a legitimate question, but it is not the same question as how AI should be used in the governance, risk and operations of a school. Conflating the two is producing category errors at the board level. We will be publishing and contributing to a clear point of view on what good, AI-assisted governance looks like in 2026 and beyond, and what to ignore.

Three forces reshaping governance in independent schools

This partnership lands at a sector inflection point. Three forces are reshaping what good governance looks like inside an independent school, and the ASBA R&C community is at the centre of all three.

The cost of governance work has changed. What used to swallow a business manager's diary now takes minutes, with better quality and a full audit trail. The economics of governance have shifted, and the schools that recognise this first will redirect leadership capacity to the work that actually moves their educational mission.

The sector is ready. Principals and business managers are voting with their attention. The appetite for purpose-built infrastructure is the strongest we have seen across our years building in this space. School leaders are no longer asking whether they need to move off spreadsheets. They are asking how to do it well.

The role is shifting. Business managers are moving from compliance clerks to governance strategists. The work has outgrown the original brief, and the people doing it deserve infrastructure that matches the responsibility they now carry.

Each force matters on its own. Together they are reshaping what good governance looks like in an independent school, and they are exactly the forces ASBA's R&C community will be navigating across 2026.

Thank you

Our thanks to the ASBA team for the partnership and the welcome, and to the Branch Leadership Team: Kathy Dickson, Mark Glover, Johnny Ioannou FCPA GAICD, Heather Walsh, Nicole Lockwood, Kristy Dennis, Mark McFie, Jason Reeves and Kumesh Haripersad. We are looking forward to contributing to the branch community across the year.

And a separate thank you to the principals and business managers who came to EthosOne ahead of this announcement. You have been ahead of the curve. We will spend 2026 continuing to earn that trust.

The work continues.

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Dave Yeates Co-founder, EthosOne Adelaide, 26 May 2026

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EthosOne is the Risk and Compliance Branch Partner for ASBA in 2026. This is a commercial sponsorship arrangement. ASBA's support of EthosOne as a partner does not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or validation of EthosOne's products or services.

EthosOne is the purpose-built governance, risk and compliance platform for independent schools across Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Learn more.