In 2002, the year before ACM-US was established, business, civic and arts leaders founded the Arts Council of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar.

The founding was made possible in part with generous support and initial funding by the Mongolian Foundation for Open Society (Soros Foundation). Current members of the ACM-US board are proud to have helped found the organization in Ulaanbaatar.

ACM has a professional staff of nine all of whom have deep understandings of different facets of Mongolian culture and close connections with cultural, business and government leaders throughout the country and abroad.

ACM-US regularly taps the expertise of ACM in Ulaanbaatar to understand the most important and effective ways to support Mongolian culture. ACM-US strictly maintains its status as an independent 501c3 nonprofit organization. It sometimes makes grants to ACM in Ulaanbaatar to leverage that organization's deep, on-the-ground expertise.