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 entered into a process that led them through several cycles of discernment together along the Cluster journey.

A coordinating committee (CCC) comprised of congregational members and leadership was originally formed to facilitate exploration of possibilities and to ultimately arrive at a recommendation for reconfiguration, based on member input from throughout the process. This task was completed in June 2006, and the Leadership Teams of the Cluster congregations soon after accepted the CCC's recommendation that the option for reconfiguration that congregations consider be a Canonical Union. From that period through the spring of 2007, the seven congregations engaged in personal and communal discernment regarding the option, culminating in the Chapters held with each congregation.

With these congregational Chapters, the seven-cycle discernment process was completed. Each congregation voted at their separate Chapters in March and April 2007 in favor of petitioning the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Socities of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL) for permission to form a new congregation. Materials for the petition were assembled and sent, and approval was granted in the fall of 2007.

A Transition Team has been appointed by the Leadership Teams of all the Cluster congregations to manage the process at this point in time. Members of the Transition Team are Bernie Baltrinic (Akron), Suzanne Bauer (New Orleans Eucharistic Missionaries), Anne Kilbride (Columbus), Therese Leckert (New Orleans St. Mary), Gene Poore (Oxford), Barbara Rapp (Kentucky), and Rene Weeks (Great Bend). Several Committees have also been designated to address the myriad tasks necessary in preparation for uniting.