The ACHA currently has three men's and two women's divisions and includes approximately 450 teams from across the United States and Canada.

Most ACHA teams offer few athletic scholarships and typically receive far less university funding.

The ACHA offers an opportunity for college hockey programs that struggle with large budgets and Title IX issues, as an alternative to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) financial structure.

But as aggressively as the sport has grown at the grass-roots level, the number of NCAA programs has not expanded as rapidly to meet the demand as these youth players reach college and look to extend their hockey-playing experience.

The ACHA's primary mission is to support the growth of two-year and four-year collegiate hockey programs nationwide.

The ACHA emphasizes academic performance, institutional sanction, eligibility criteria, and standards of play and opportunities for national competition, and the ACHA promotes all aspects of collegiate hockey stressing the personal development of individual athletes as well as national recognition for member organizations.

The ACHA's policies cover team and player eligibility, rules of play, ranking procedures, national tournament procedures, and other administrative issues, although the ACHA parallels the NCAA Division III with most eligibility requirements, recruitment processes, gameplay rules, etc.

Fifteen charter members met during the Chicago Showcase in Skokie, Illinois at the North Shore Hilton.

The members that created the organization were Tom Keegan (ACHA), Al Murdoch (Iowa State), Joe Battista (Penn State), Jim Gilmore (Ohio), Ernie Ferrari (Stanford), Howard Jenks (California), Jeff Aikens (North Dakota State), Don Spencer (West Virginia), Jim Barry (Navy), Scott Fuller (Navy), Leo Golembiewski (Arizona), Ron Starr (DePaul), Cary Adams (PCHA), Jim Warden (PCHA) and Jack White (UCLA).

The goal of the organization was to create an impartial governing body to monitor national tournaments, player eligibility, and general oversight.

During the summer of 2009 the University of Alaska Fairbanks established a Women's Division II team becoming the 49th state in the ACHA.

[2] In 2017, the ACHA adopted a new hosting format for holding the annual National Championship Tournament for all Men's & Women's Divisions.

Nine conferences and Independent teams compete annually for the Murdoch Cup, which is awarded to the Men's ACHA Division 1 National Champion.

After the final ranking in February the top two seeds from each region earn an automatic berth into Nationals.

Seeds 3–10 compete in their respective single-elimination Regional Tournaments, with the two teams who win both of their games also earning a Nationals berth.

At the end of the year, the top four teams from each region in the final edition of a monthly computer ranking are invited to the ACHA National Tournament.

The original ACHA logo was created by Dave Kammerdeiner of the West Virginia University Art Department under the direction of Don Spencer for a cost of $50.

In August 2003, the ACHA held an official contest to design a new logo, with the winning school receiving free registration for the 2003–2004 season.

The University of Washington's Husky Hockey team won the contest, with former graphic-design intern Tom Eykemans designing the new version of the logo (as shown above).

Tampa Bay Lightning (NHL) Boston Pride (PHF), 2017–18 Buffalo Beauts (PHF), 2015–16 Brampton Thunder (CWHL), 2016–17Toronto Furies (CWHL), 2017–18SK Gorny (Russian Women's Hockey League) 2018–present Media related to American Collegiate Hockey Association at Wikimedia Commons