Wilton Manors ally business network boosts Pride support, donations

A Wilton Manors Business Network International chapter said it has become Florida’s fastest-growing group while channeling money and business toward LGBTQ support in Broward County, including a $20,000 donation to The Pride Center at Equality Park. Jerry Windle said, “We are the fastest growing chapter in all of Florida,” as the chapter positioned itself as a local answer to corporations that have pulled back from Pride sponsorships.

The group is the only officially designated LGBTQ-plus ally chapter in Florida, even though most of its members are not part of the LGBTQ community. Windle said the network has generated nearly $2 million in referral business in less than a year, a sign that the effort is built around commerce as much as visibility. In Wilton Manors, where local businesses and LGBTQ institutions already overlap closely, that money flow matters as national brands scale back the kinds of support that once helped underwrite Pride events and community programs.

The direct impact lands at The Pride Center at Equality Park, 2040 N. Dixie Hwy., where leaders say the organization has offered free HIV testing for two decades and serves thousands of people each year. The center has faced pressure on that work before: NBC Miami reported in April 2025 that a $350,000 grant used for public HIV testing was at risk of ending as soon as July. Windle said the chapter’s donation was aimed at helping fill gaps for a nonprofit that remains one of South Florida’s main LGBTQ service hubs.

Wilton Manors has long been a center of that support network. The city says Stonewall Pride draws about 35,000 participants, and it points to a history of public LGBTQ visibility that includes the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Florida on January 6, 2015 and a WE DO! mass wedding at City Hall on February 14, 2015. The city also says it had the second gay-majority governing body in the United States by 2000 and became the first city in Florida with an all-LGBTQ+ City Commission in November 2018.

For businesses on and around Wilton Drive, the chapter’s pitch is practical: keep referrals local, keep dollars moving through Broward, and keep institutions like The Pride Center funded when broader sponsorships weaken. In a city built around LGBTQ culture, that kind of ally-led giving is becoming part of the infrastructure itself.