How Citizens built a parents & caregivers BRG to 1,000 members through intersectional programming
Algra launched Caring for Citizens during the pandemic and grew it past 1,000 members in under two years by co-hosting programs with the veterans, Pride, and multicultural BRGs.
Origin story
Algra is the Corporate Giving Operations Manager at Citizens and the chair of Caring for Citizens, the bank's BRG for working parents and caregivers.
She found out she was pregnant with her second child in February 2020 — right before the world shut down. The months that followed erased the line between work and life for a lot of colleagues: kids in Zoom backgrounds, older loved ones wandering into meetings, openly trading notes on how to cope.
When that openness started to fade, she pitched leadership on a BRG built around it.
Growth
- Launched in April 2023.
- Grew to nearly 1,000 members in under two years.
- New members continue to join every month as awareness spreads.
Citizens has seven BRGs total; Caring for Citizens is the newest.
The strategy: lean into intersectionality
From the beginning, Algra designed the BRG to co-host programming with every other BRG at Citizens, because parents and caregivers exist inside every other community.
Three programs show the model:
1. Habitat for Humanity build with the Veterans BRG
The two BRGs spent a day on-site building a playhouse from the studs up. At the end of the day, a local veteran family came to receive it — a home-away-from-home for kids when a parent is deployed. The activity worked because it was tangible, hands-on, and gave both BRGs a shared outcome.
2. Author fireside chat with Citizens Pride
Around Transgender Day of Visibility, Caring for Citizens partnered with Citizens Pride (the LGBTQ+ BRG) to host an author whose book is written from the perspective of a mother whose son identified as transgender at a young age. Most books on the topic are told from the individual's perspective — this one was from a parent's. It gave parents going through a similar journey a chance to feel seen and gave others a window in.
3. Aging loved ones with the Multicultural BRG
A combined speaker session and open forum on caring for aging loved ones across cultures — how expectations on caregivers can differ for Asian, Black, and Latine families, including practical challenges like finding bilingual senior care. Members got expert content and a space to compare notes with each other.
Why intersectional programming works
- It doubles your audience without doubling your workload.
- It surfaces members at the intersection — colleagues who weren't sure where they fit suddenly see a program built for exactly them.
- It signals to leadership that BRGs are infrastructure, not silos.
Takeaways for other ERG leaders
- Build on shared moments. The pandemic created openness; the BRG turned that openness into a permanent home.
- Pick a co-host for every flagship program. Default to "and which BRG can we do this with?"
- Pair speakers with forums. Expert content brings people in; peer conversation makes them come back.
- Tangible activities beat panels. A playhouse you can point to outlasts a slide deck.