The Founders of Pi Lambda Phi sought to create a "college fraternity on lines broader and more liberal than those employed" at the time. It was their purpose to establish
"a fraternity in which all men were brothers, no matter what their religion; a fraternity in which ability, open-mindedness, farsightedness, and a progressive, forward-looking attitude [would] be recognized as the basic attributes."
In 1895 at Yale University, a group of men were denied the right of admission into college fraternities because of their religious and racial backgrounds. The leaders of this group were three gentlemen, Frederick Manfred Werner, Louis Samter Levy and Henry Mark Fisher-our Founding Fathers. Werner, Levy and Fisher had a vision of a fraternity where neither sect nor creed shall ever act as a bar to admission for any man. This is how Pi Lambda Phi Fraternity was established. In the preamble of the Founders' Bulletin, dated March 1895, it states:
"We students at American colleges appreciating the need of a fraternity which shall eliminate all sectarianism do hereby associate ourselves in this Pi Lambda Phi Fraternity."