Under the chairmanship of journalist Paul Underwood Kellogg, it was formed by 41 Americans to support US President Woodrow Wilson's efforts to achieve a just peace, with his speech and proposal of the Fourteen Points, which included the idea of a world organization, later to be called the League of Nations.

The FPA also sought to increase support for United States membership in the world body that was then being discussed and laid out in the Versailles Treaty and the Paris Peace Conference, 1919, with the "Big Four" representatives dominating the many representatives of the nations formerly at war: President Woodrow Wilson of the US, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, Premier Georges Clemenceau of France, and Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy following the Armistice ending combat in World War I.

Following the failure of the United States Senate to ratify the Treaty and membership in the League during various debate sessions with votes taken in 1919 and early 1920, and also later through the results of the Presidential Election of 1920, it was later reconstituted in 1923 as the Foreign Policy Association.

In 1938, a series of lectures on foreign policy aimed towards women called "Off the Record" was launched under the support of the FPA, which later became a non-profit organization of its own in 1938, and now has more than 400 members as of 2023.

[8] In the effort to help distinguish itself from other non-profit educational and civic organizations in the field of international affairs, the Foreign Policy Association works to engage the public through a variety of different media: Print, Internet and blogs, and television and DVDs.

Narrated by David Strathairn, the series features eight half-hour documentaries providing background information, analyses, and debate on issues of concern to US foreign policymakers.

[11] Since the launch of the luncheon series in the 1920s, the Foreign Policy Association has invited experts to discuss global affairs issues with the public.