A standard is only worth who stands behind it
Cimbiotic exists to do one thing: give associations and nonprofits an independent, credible answer to the question their members have started asking.
Why this company exists
Associations spent two years asking whether AI belonged in their operations. That hesitation has flipped, and adoption has outrun any plan to govern it. Roughly nine in ten professionals believe employees are already using AI in their organization (ISACA, 2026 AI Pulse Poll). Fewer than half report a formal policy.
What makes that dangerous for a membership organization is not the technology. It is that member trust is not a soft value here — it is the balance sheet. It is why members join, why they renew, why they share their data, and why employers and regulators treat the credential as worth something.
There are governance platforms for enterprises and certification bodies for large companies. There was nothing built for an organization with fifteen staff, a credentialing program, a volunteer board and a chapter network. Cimbiotic is that.
Our line is Humans Leading Change, and we mean it as a position. AI will change how associations work whether or not anyone decides it should. What can still be decided is who leads that change: a board, a staff and a membership who can see what their AI does and choose what to do about it, or a vendor’s default settings. Cimbiotic exists to put the evidence in human hands. We test, we report what we find, and we leave the decisions with the people who answer to the members. Leading change starts with being able to explain it, which is why Cimbiotic was founded by an association technologist and a communication scholar.
Rick Bawcum
Co-Founder · CAE · CISSP · AAiP · Certified AI Consultant
Rick has spent eleven years working inside the association sector, and nearly three decades before that in enterprise technology and risk. He founded Cimatri in 2015 and led it as chief executive until 2026, advising associations and nonprofits on technology strategy, data and operations.
He holds four credentials that rarely appear together, and each covers a different part of the problem: CAE, for how associations are governed and run; CISSP, for security and risk discipline; AAiP, Sidecar’s Association AI Professional credential, for AI in the association setting; and Certified AI Consultant, from the US Institute of Diplomacy and Human Rights, for AI consulting. That combination is the reason Cimbiotic exists in the shape it does. Most AI governance material is written either by people who understand associations or by people who understand risk discipline, and it is usually obvious which.
He wrote Ethical AI for Associations, and was a contributing author on Ascend: Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations. Earlier in his career he held senior technology roles at Verizon Wireless, Iron Mountain and CapRock Communications, and served as chief operating and technology officer at Bross Group. He studied the implications of AI for business strategy at MIT Sloan.
Jennifer L. Thompson, PhD
Co-Founder · PhD, Human Communication Studies, University of Denver
Jennifer holds a PhD in Human Communication Studies from the University of Denver (2002). Her research, published in Communication Quarterly, examines how people negotiate identity and meaning, and how the accounts they give of themselves shape trust. She has since worked as a research consultant, evaluating programs for community and philanthropic organizations, including the Lundy Foundation.
That training is why Humans Leading Change is a position here and not a slogan. A board can only lead change it can describe, and a member can only trust an answer they can follow. Testing tells an association what its AI does. Jennifer’s discipline asks what the association says about it, whether people can understand it, and whether the words match the practice. She shapes how Cimbiotic’s findings are written, how Trust Disclosures read, and how boards and staff explain their AI to the members who ask.
Our relationships, published
We ask the organizations we assess to disclose how they use AI. It would be incoherent not to disclose our own commercial relationships, so here they are.
Rick founded Cimatri in 2015 and led it until 2026, and held advisory roles across the Blue Cypress group of association technology companies. He exited both in September 2026, before Cimbiotic took on any assessment work, and retains no ownership, advisory position or financial interest in either. No company that sells AI or technology to associations holds any interest in Cimbiotic, and Cimbiotic took no commissions, referral fees, equity, revenue share or board seats from any company whose products it assesses or tests, and no fee it charged depended on the finding.
Jennifer L. Thompson, PhD, Cimbiotic’s other co-founder, has no current or prior relationship with any association client, technology vendor or employer that Cimbiotic assesses, tests or advises.
Four things you can hold us to
We do not sell AI
Cimbiotic takes no commissions, referral fees, equity, revenue share or board seats from any vendor, and no fee depends on the finding. We have nothing to recommend you buy.
We publish our criteria
You can read the framework before you engage us, and so can anyone you show the results to. See the approach.
We can say no
We keep the right to fail an assessment and to withdraw a mark. That right is worth more to you than to us.
We say what we do not know
Where the evidence is thin, we say so. Where we are not yet accredited, we say so. A trust business that shades the truth about itself has no business assessing anyone else.
What nobody knows yet
No good survey asks association members directly how their organization’s AI use affects their view of it. The research we cite comes from professionals reporting on their own organizations, from directors, and from consumers in general. The closest stakeholder research sits in the charitable sector, and members are not donors.
The direction of travel is consistent and well corroborated. The precise percentages should not be quoted as though they were census data, and we try not to.
Closing that gap is part of why each assessment matters. In time, the aggregate picture across assessments becomes the sector research that does not currently exist.
Worth a conversation?
Thirty minutes, no obligation and no pitch deck. Sometimes the answer is that you are in reasonable shape and should spend the money elsewhere.