Why Wonder

At Wonder, we accelerate progressive social change.

We’re experts in messaging, storytelling, psychology and opinion research. We believe curiosity and smart research create amazing, breakthrough moments to make the world a better place. We also understand that human beings are Heartwired — that emotions, identity, values, beliefs and lived experiences shape our decisions on complex social issues — and use that knowledge to help our partners create social change.

Audience Insights

We conduct audience research that gets at the heart of how our audiences feel, think, and act and we turn those insights into actionable recommendations for how to more effectively Heartwire your communications. Our team has deep experience in moderating research interviews and focus groups, conducting rapid message testing, and analyzing qualitative data and we partner with leading quantitative public opinion researchers to deliver insights that can drive action on issues like climate change, immigration, and the economy.

Communications & Message Strategy

We develop messaging strategies to help our partners communicate more effectively about their work with key audiences. Our partners work on tough social issues within complex and changing landscapes. We create organizational messages and develop communication strategies that are Heartwired to reach key audiences on a range of issues including housing and homelessness, health equity, immigration, and more.

Capacity Strengthening

We craft trainings that empower advocates to build skills in messaging, strategic communications, public speaking, story-telling, and audience research. Our experts tailor capacity strengthening to specific organizations and cohorts of organizations. For example, we have trained hundreds of immigration advocates on evidenced-based strategies for winning the immigration narrative, and partnered with foundations to build storytelling, audience research, and other communications capacities among their grantees.

Policy Change

We leverage the Heartwired approach to build or broaden support to change policies. Our work has led to lasting policy change like granting medical-aid-in-dying to terminally ill patients and increasing funding for community colleges in Texas.

Behavior Change

We unpack the emotions, values, beliefs, lived experiences, and identities of our audiences to make faster progress on socially sensitive issues. Our team utilizes deep audience research to unlock effective formulas for changing audience behavior, including on COVID-19 vaccine uptake confidence and students who see themselves as college-bound.

Narrative Change

We guide our partners through the Heartwired approach for narrative change that builds narrative power across movements. By working with movement advocates to identify opportunities for narrative change to take hold among audiences, our team has transformed cultural narratives, including to achieve the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.

A Letter From Robert Pérez

Wonder’s Founder and Chief Exploration Officer

Years ago, I was working with advocates to boost Christians’ acceptance of LGBT people. It sounds difficult now, so think of how impossible it felt back then. Except it wasn’t impossible — but it did require a new approach to social-change communications.

Working with my colleagues in public-opinion research and psychology, our research uncovered a conflict that many Christians feel: they cared about the LGBT people in their lives, but they worried about staying true to their church’s teachings.

The traditional approach to communications hammers audiences with messages that ignore this conflict, eventually writing conflicted audiences off as a lost cause. We were able to create a messaging strategy that helped Christians manage their conflict, bringing them to our side and garnering wins on issues like the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.

I founded Wonder to help other changemakers make progress on complex social issues using the same approach. Using smart research, we can uncover our audience’s conflict, help them manage it, and make the impossible suddenly become possible. — Robert