A series of events and conversations led to the creation of The Drexel Fund in 2015. Among education practitioners and leaders there was a growing desire to launch an effort to better support the growth and replication of high-quality private schools in states where publicly-funded school choice programs made private education more accessible to low-income families.

Founding board chairman BJ Cassin, after years of serving as a founding board member with the Cristo Rey Network (CRN), combined efforts with John Eriksen, a former Catholic school superintendent, and Rob Birdsell, former president and CEO of CRN, to develop the initial concept for The Drexel Fund. With an initial pledge of $1 million, The Drexel Fund was launched to increase the number of available seats in high-performing private schools through new growth and replication. Today, eight years since its founding, The Drexel Fund has supported the creation of nearly 19,000 new high-quality private school seats in 73 new schools.