The two largest civic groups in the Downtown are merging into a new force for resident advocacy and coordination, the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association (DBNA).

The Downtown Boston Residents Association (DBRA) and Midtown Park Plaza Neighborhood Association (MPPNA) are coming together with the aim of combining their membership bases into an even stronger, unified voice and further streamlining their public advocacy.

It’s a natural evolution for the MPPNA, originally started in the 1990s through its own consolidation of that time’s groups involved in planning and development for the Midtown Cultural District, the Theater District, and Park Plaza.

Peggy Ings, one of the MPPNA’s lead coordinators, says the move lets residents better delegate oversight and advocacy instead of having every person show up to every single meeting.

Now with the DBRA rapidly gaining prominence and members, the two groups have agreed to perform the same maneuver for hopefully the same benefits in coordination and efficiency under the moniker of the DBNA.

“The DBRA is doing now what had stopped happening before the MPPNA’s founding, advocating for the residents,” she said. “I said recently to DBRA leader Rishi Shukla, ‘we should have a conversation,’ and he agreed that the two organizations should talk. We needed them and they needed us.”

The MPPNA voted in favor of integrating on September 13, and the DBRA followed suit on September 19, announcing the consolidation and their organization’s new branding.

The MPPNA’s structure will make merging fairly painless. It has no employees, only volunteers. So it has no finances that need to be folded into the new organization. It’s also maintained a distributed leadership structure, with volunteers helping local subgroups to coordinate independently rather than directing them.

MPPNA leadership will also be continuing to work under the new neighborhood association. Both Ings and MPPNA Director Mary Higgins will be picking up their administrative roles under the new umbrella.

“I think it’s truly just pure upside. Many of the MPPNA folks have already been participating in DRBA meetings,” said Ings. “Now we’ll have more of a continuity of effort, a bigger impact on the neighborhood. We’ve heard nothing but support from both sides.”

The groups will also be pooling their membership, with each contributing hundreds of names to what Ings suspects will be one of the largest downtown neighborhood associations in the country. That said, those final sums could be on the liberal side as there’s substantial overlap between the two organizations already.

The DBRA did not respond to a request for comment on this article.