It has a membership of more than 260,000 women, with 140 collegiate chapters in the United States and Canada and 307 alumni associations worldwide.

[3] It is a founding member of the National Panhellenic Conference (NPC), an umbrella organization that includes 26 American sororities.

[3] In 1869, two students at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, Mary Louise Bennett and Hannah Jeannette Boyd, were dissatisfied with the fact that, while men enjoyed membership in fraternities, women had few equivalent organizations for companionship, support, and advancement, and were instead limited to literary societies.

Bennett and Boyd decided to create a women's fraternity and sought members "not only for literary work, but also for social development", beginning with their friend Mary Moore Stewart.

[6] They recruited three additional women, Anna Elizabeth Willits, Martha Louisa Stevenson, and Susan Burley Walker, to join in founding the fraternity.

Although the groundwork of the organization began as early as 1869, the 1876 Convention voted to recognize October 13, 1870 as the official Founders Day since no earlier charter date could be determined.

In June 2018, an announcement was made that a new brand would be rolled out during the 2018–2019 academic year with the tag line "Dream Boldly, Live Fully".

The original keys were larger and were not standardized; many were specially made to the member's specifications, sometimes including stones such as opals.

[19] The Federal lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice on 25 August 2023, citing that "The University of Wyoming chapter voted to admit - and, more broadly, a sorority of hundreds of thousands approved - [the admission of transgender individual, Artemis] Langford.

This ruling effectively places any resolution back with the national and local organization to resolve internally.

[21] In 1997, the television show 20/20 featured an exposé on hazing in the sorority system[22] that included a hazing by three members of Kappa Kappa Gamma at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, and a local sorority Lambda Delta Sigma at Concordia College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The members who were involved with the incident were not charged by the state of Indiana with criminal recklessness under the hazing statute, as had been reported.

[24] In 2014, the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at the main campus of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, was forced to stop its operations for forcing pledges to "drink until they passed out, act like animals, and wiggle on the floor like 'sizzling bacon'".

"[29] Bruce Ivins, the senior bio-defense researcher at United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), before allegedly being driven to suicide by allegations that he was the "sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax attacks",[30] reportedly had a "long and strange obsession" with Kappa Kappa Gamma,[31] as well as with other sororities such as Chi Omega.

[32][33] Ivins reportedly became obsessed with Kappa when he was rebuffed by a woman in the sorority during his days as a student at the University of Cincinnati.

According to the panel's report, Ivins tormented sorority member Nancy Haigwood at the University of North Carolina.

Ivins stole her notebook, which documented her research for her doctoral studies, and vandalized her residence.