The organization's mission is to be a community workshop where women and nonbinary people can work on projects in a comfortable, welcoming environment.

DU was founded in 2013 by a group of about ten women including Amelia Greenhall, Valerie Aurora, Liz Henry and Ari Lacenski from their connections at other hackerspaces; at The Ada Initiative's feminist unconference, AdaCamp; and through Geekfeminism.org, collecting initial funding through an Indiegogo campaign.

[4] Later that year, Lacenski left the group, claiming that two unnamed cofounders practiced a form of activism that she considered too aggressive.

[citation needed] DU's logo is a bright pink Unicode character (U+22D3), from the Mathematical Operators block.

To fund the move and several equipment purchases, Double Union undertook an Indiegogo campaign, which finished at 106 percent of its goal.