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Transgender rights group aims to expand activist-founded database of LGBTQ-friendly businesses • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
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Date: 2025-06-25
A South Dakota nonprofit focused on transgender rights will curate and maintain what’s been a volunteer-run, searchable database of businesses friendly to LGBTQ+ patrons.
The Transformation Project and the database, known as Dorothy’s List, announced the merger this week in a press release meant to dovetail with the end of Pride Month.
Adam Jorgensen founded Dorothy’s List in 2023, using a $1,000 grant from the Sutton Leadership Institute, a nonprofit that trains aspiring young professionals in business, nonprofit and political spheres.
Jorgensen applied for and received the grant from the institute after graduating from its yearlong development program. The Sioux Falls man pulled information from a few different – but largely dormant – regional lists of businesses to launch the statewide list.
Similar lists exist nationwide, such as The Pink Pages, and others focus on medical providers. Jorgensen’s goal was to offer a state-specific list for South Dakota.
The grant money allowed Jorgensen to pay for a logo design and produce stickers and other promotional merchandise, as well as to set up the website, which launched in 2023.
The site lists around 150 businesses, and Jorgensen told South Dakota Searchlight that about 80 of them have taken its inclusion pledge. That pledge asks businesses to take steps like placing rainbow flags in business windows, using provided materials for employee training and committing to speak against legislative proposals that might harm LGBTQ+ people.
With a full-time job and other commitments, Jorgensen said he’d grown concerned that he couldn’t offer enough attention to the project to properly maintain the list, named for Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz.” It’s a nod to the question “are you a friend of Dorothy,” asked in decades past by people looking for safe spaces in the era of criminalized homosexuality.
Jorgensen said he was thrilled when the Transformation Project agreed to fold the curation of Dorothy’s List into its project list.
“It’s fantastic to see the Transformation Project take over as lead of this project,” Jorgensen said in the announcement. “Dorothy’s List addresses a real need for South Dakotans, LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit or otherwise, that want to spend their time and dollars wisely.”
“Two Spirit” is a word used by Indigenous people to refer to those who do not identify as male or female.
The Transformation Project’s status a nonprofit with a full-time staff should allow Dorothy’s List to “expand its reach,” the press release says, and to serve as a tool for “communities to unite over a common cause.”
“We must continue to hold the corporations and individuals accountable that actively harm our community by rallying behind those that don’t,” Susan Williams, executive director of the Transformation Project, said in the release.
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[1] Url:
https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2025/06/25/transgender-rights-group-aims-to-expand-activist-founded-database-of-lgbtq-friendly-businesses/
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