As a result of discussion at a Dominican Alliance meeting, leaders from the Akron and Columbus Dominican Sisters began conversations that gave rise to the Cluster. New Orleans St. Mary soon expressed an interest in the process and was invited to join the conversation. Official meetings among the leadership teams of the three congregations began in March 2001.

At their third meeting in December 2001, the teams developed a mission statement, and at the following meeting in June 2002, they determined that a coordinating committee was needed to assume responsibility of moving the process forward. This new Cluster Coordinating Committee (CCC) would consist of one leadership representative and one membership representative from each Cluster congregation. In July 2003, the New Orleans Eucharistic Missionaries of St. Dominic joined the Cluster, and later that year Kentucky, Oxford, and Great Bend joined as well, bringing the total number of congregations in the Cluster process to seven.

These congregations have entered into a process that will lead them through several cycles of discernment together along the Cluster journey. All the Cluster congregations trace their common histories to St. Dominic, and through this discernment process, they are building moments of shared Dominican history together.